FATEFUL RETURN TO TORCELLO

Three years after the Torcello gondola mixup, we returned to Carnevale and Venezia for the last time with our good friends Deb and Joan. Dennis insisted we take a gondola ride on the first Saturday. It was a wonderful ride with a gondolier named Angelo. Afterwards we had hot chocolate at Café Florian. But Dennis became very sick, so we decided to change our plans and forego our planned trip to Rome and stay a few extra days in Venice.

Monday 20 February, was supposed to have been our travel day to Rome. Since it was now an extra day, I thought it would be fun and relaxing to take several boat trips to the other islands. That would minimize walking. And I wanted another chance to have a decent visit to Torcello. Before taking the large boat for the connection to Torcello, we came across the painter Picchio Santangelo, who had painted Dennis’ first picture of Venezia back in 2003. (We had had to have it framed twice to look its best in Dennis’ Venetian guest bedroom.)

When we got to Burano, our connection was all set to leave. It seemed perfect. We could visit the Byzantine church and 7th Century cathedral in Torcello, then return to Burano for lunch. (Three years before, my apparent mistake had been to have lunch in Burano before going to Torcello, and that had thrown off our schedule, which contributed to the gondola mix-up. This year it really didn’t matter since we had no plans for that night.)

When we arrived on Torcello, we discovered that several new restaurants had been built since our last visit. Dennis, Deb and I looked at the various posted menus, and considered changing our plans to have lunch on Torcello. Joan had some mobility issues and walked a little behind us. At least the island was completely flat, and there was only one bridge to cross before reaching the church and cathedral. Deb and I crossed briskly to check out the menu at the Cipriani Inn just before the Byzantine church.

We heard Dennis bellow. “Don’t waste your time. They’re closed. It’s open only in the summer!”

From behind, Joan saw Dennis raise and shake his walking stick at us.

Deb and I turned around….and saw Dennis lying flat on his face on the ground. He had tripped on the very last step. He didn’t make a sound. We rushed over. Blood was gushing from his face!!

Immediately, five or six waiters came out from the “closed” Cipriani Inn. A young woman from one of only two concession stands asked if we wanted to call the ambulance boat. I hesitated for a moment, wanting to evaluate the situation first. An older woman from the other concession rushed up with hand embroidered napkins and handkerchiefs and wiped the blood from Dennis’ face— and she wouldn’t accept any payment!!

The waiters helped us take Dennis into the lobby of the restaurant and brought a bucket of ice. Meanwhile the young woman had gone ahead and called for the ambulance boat with the emergency number on her telefono.

While we waited, Dennis wanted to have some lunch. After some delays, we were seated in the very stylish restaurant. I think we were the only ones there. Dennis insisted on fish soup. I had an expensive Mozzarella Caprese salad, which was absolutely superb. Just as we were served, the ambulance arrived with three hunky Italians. Dennis had only a few bites of his fish soup.

The ride back to Venice was very quick, and before we knew it we had landed at the back entrance to the municipal hospital. We were taken to the emergency room, where he registered, and then sat….. and waited.

The four of us – Joan, Deb, Dennis and I – sat and talked and tried to amuse ourselves. Of course, we were all very concerned.

Smoking wasn’t allowed. Eventually Dennis got extremely agitated. After several hours, he said he wanted to get up and leave. He was sitting in a wheel-chair and his head had been bandaged by the emergency crew.

I don’t think Dennis felt how badly he had been hurt. He seemed to be loosing surface sensitivity. Of course, that may have contributed to his fall.

Debbie didn’t speak Italian, but she’s quite fluent in Spanish. She noticed the poster on the wall behind Dennis’ wheelchair. It listed sequential priorities for triage. We had waited so long because other patients came after us who were higher up the pyramid.

Debbie firmly informed Dennis, that we hadn’t waited all that time for him just to get up and leave – and that if he tried, she’d take physical action – and slug him— to guarantee that he got to a higher level on the triage pyramid.

That kept him quiet – and in his wheelchair. Eventually a hospital aide came for Dennis. I accompanied him through several corridors, outside in a drizzle, and upstairs to another area of the hospital, where Dennis had some x-rays, and then another, shorter wait.

In the meantime, Deb and Joan decided it was safe to return to the Zatterre. It was after nine o’clock.

Although we had been up front with everybody—from the Cipriani waiters, to the emergency crew, and the registry desk at the hospital – the young woman physician, who later examined Dennis without wearing rubber gloves, became quite upset when we told her again that Dennis was HIV+. She disappeared for a while, then had Dennis undergo more blood tests. It should have been standard procedure for any doctor to use rubber gloves, particularly with a patient who had bled so badly.

Another doctor saw us and gave Dennis a prescription, and told us to return to the hospital in the morning. We got back to the Don Orione Artigianelli about midnight.

Poor Dennis looked as though he had been mugged. By morning both eyes were black and blue, and he had banged up his nose. It was so fortunate his lenses were plastic. Otherwise he might have been blinded by the fall. I still have his glasses with severe scratches.

We took the vaporetto to the back entrance of the hospital again. This time he was pushed in his wheel chair to the pharmacia, which was part of the older section of the hospital, formerly the Scuola San Marco. We passed right by the doors which led to the second floor library we had visited three years before. Karen Marshall had recommended seeing its extraordinary ceiling in her suggested list of favorite sites. This time we just passed by.

At the pharmacia Dennis picked up some pain pills and antibiotics. The bill was about six euros. That turned out to be the total bill for the entire episode. There was no charge for the ambulance boat, the emergency room or the doctors’ visits! It was all covered by Italian national health care. We have so much to learn from the Europeans!

Afterwards we took a mahogany water taxi back to the Zatterre. It was the only time we had ridden in one of those beautiful boats which reminded me of the Thousand Islands and Zavikon.

Dennis was apprehensive about taking the antibiotics. His stomach was upset enough, and he was worried it would incapacitate him for the rest of the trip. He had me call one of the nurses at the Kaiser Research Group back in San Francisco. Brooke said he didn’t need to take the antibiotics. (At that point it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference.)

For the rest of the time in Venezia, Dennis wore his cape and plumed hat. Since it was Carnevale, his black and blue face didn’t stand out as anything unusual. It looked like makeup and part of his costume.

After three days in Firenze, where Dennis and Joan purchased gold jewelry on the Ponte Vecchio (Dennis bought earrings for all the women in his life including my sisters and nieces) we returned to Venezia for the nighttime gondola ride and dinner. It really wasn’t much of a gondola ride. (The earlier one we had missed in 2003 was a lot longer). And it was very cold. I’m so glad we took the extended gondola trip the Saturday before Dennis’ accident.

I returned to Torcello on Thursday August 30th, 2007 with Debbie and Alison. That fulfilled one of my major objectives of the entire memorial trip. We took the larger vaporetto to the Lido and made our connection to Punta Sabbioni. From there we arrived on Burano and took the smaller vaporetto to Torcello. It was a relatively short and flat stroll on the new brick sidewalk and dirt detour to Dennis’ bridge just before the Cipriani hotel and restaurant. We were about the first guests for lunch in the covered patio near the garden. I found a beautiful red rose bush, where I scattered a handful of Dennis. He would have loved to have seen that garden in full bloom.

After a superb luncheon, we stopped by the concession stands, which had opened while we were eating. I found the young woman who had called for the water ambulance after Dennis’ fall. She wouldn’t accept any payment, but I bought a number of items from her stand. The older woman, who had wiped Dennis’ face with her hand embroidered napkins wasn’t there, but by chance, her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson stopped by, so we were able to thank them. (For some reason, I neglected to find out their names. Our first night in Firenze, at dinner, we met an American from Queens or Brooklyn, who had lived in Florence for forty years and was a professor of English at the University. Her questions made me recognize my omission. So on my last full day of the holiday on September 11, 2007, I returned to Torcello and learned that the young woman was Marika and the older woman, Anna. Anna was still away in Napoli, but I gave silk scarves from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul to Marika for her and for Anna, and this time she graciously accepted.)

Earlier we had visited the wonderful Greek Orthodox church and splendid cathedral, where Dennis and I had sung a plainsong Salve Regina in 1997.

TORCELLO

Photo:static.panoramio.com/photos/original/3970425.jpg

In 1997 Dennis and I left Rome after the official end of the St. Dominic’s Choir Pilgrimage Tour and spent a few days in Vicenza. Then from Vicenza we took the train to Venezia for our second time together. We stayed two days at a small hotel near San Marco, and later moved to the Artigianelli Monastery in the Zatterre.

Dennis was so pleased when we were stopped by some students in a more remote part of the city and were asked to register to vote. In our cordoroys, sensible shoes, wool caps and Barbour coats, we didn’t look like tourists. They actually thought we were Venetians!

On our last day of the trip, we took the large water-bus to the island of Torcello, the furthest away from the main city. On the way we stopped at another island and had a terrific lunch at a restaurant apparently frequented by local fishermen. We arrived at Torcello near the end of daylight. It’s perfectly flat and very empty. There wasn’t much there besides an inn run by Cipriani, an old Byzantine church and the original 7th century cathedral. Torcello had been the first settlement for Venice, but was later abandoned because of malaria. Much of the island is now cultivated.

We entered the cathedral, which appeared to be empty. Scaffolding blocked an unobstructed view of the apse with its marvelous mosaics of Mary. In the darkened nave, Dennis and I sang a plainsong Salve Regina (one that Dennis had sung regularly at Summer Benedictine Camp). Previously unseen German tourists complimented our singing.

We exited the cathedral to see the sun setting over the lagoon. It was a perfect moment. We had time to go back to Venice for dinner before heading off to Milan to catch our flight home the next morning. Instead we decided to collect our things and leave directly for Milano. Nothing could surpass that sublime experience!

How different would be the second and third visits to Torcello.

While Dennis had been upset that I had paid his way to Italy and Venice in 1997, we returned three more times in 2000, 2003 & 2006.

In 2000 we were in Venice just a few foggy, rainy days before starting our Mediterranean cruise out of the port near Rome. We didn’t go back to Torcello then, but we did take the elevator to the top of the campanile by San Marco. (I had been there before in 1979, in much better weather.)

In Rome we stayed at a convent just around the corner from Piazza Navona. On the first full day we took a side trip to Subiaco to see the cave where St. Benedict had his extraordinary vision and later founded the Benedictine order. We missed the last bus from town, and ended up walking about three miles up hill. On the way we passed the ruins of one of Nero’s villas, where he committed suicide after being hunted down by his enemies. Dennis was about to give up, but with encouragement we continued to the top. Being there fulfilled one of Dennis’ lifelong goals.

In 2003 we had an offer from US Airways for really cheap tickets to Rome, so we decided to go to the opening of Carnevale in Venezia. My niece Allison Martin was studying at Christie’s in London at the time, and we invited her to join us in Venice. Actually, as I recall, the original offer was for inexpensive tickets to London to visit Allison, but Dennis said he’d rather go to Italy.

In Venezia we stayed again at the Artigianelli Monastery in the Zattere.We left a message for Allison and her boyfriend at their hotel on the Lido to meet us at Café Florian in Piazza San Marco. They got the message and had already saved us an inside table when we met them.

Dennis and I brought 18th Century costumes rented from the Bohemian Club thanks to my friend, John Blauer, head of costumes at the club. We had silk long johns to give a little substance to the clothes designed primarily for indoor productions. Allison and her friend brought costumes from London. We wore them to dinner at a restaurant next to Quadri.

We missed the official opening of Carnevale that Sunday in order to visit three Palladian villas in the Veneto. We rented a car which I drove. The tricky part was navigating through Mestre and making connections north. We first went to Villa Cornaro, where we had to make special arrangements for a private tour. We met the young lad at the Palladio Café across the street from the villa. Then we drove to Villa Barbaro with its extraordinary frescos by Veronese and the handsome chapel, where Palladio reportedly died after falling off a scaffold. We saved Villa Emo, Dennis’ favorite, for last. It was a perfectly wonder-filled day!

Allison and her friend flew back to London the following morning. Dennis and I had two more days in Venice before returning to Rome on the night train to make our return flight from Leonardo da Vinci. Before leaving on the trip (which we nearly had to cancel because of a severe snow storm which had shut down the entire East Coast from Boston to Atlanta – then at the last minute, were able to make connections to Frankfurt through Pittsburgh PA) Dennis had emailed Karen Marshall with Save Venice in New York. Karen is a marvelous photographer, and Dennis wrote to ask for her suggestions in Venice. I printed out Karen’s email with a list of her favorite places in Venice and decided we should try to visit all of them. That proved to be a major problem and eventual disappointment for Dennis (and for me).

We accomplished a great deal on Monday, but Ca’ Rezonico was closed and Dennis just knew it would be one of his favorite places on earth. So we went on Tuesday morning, which threw off our – or my—planned itinerary. Karen had recommended we visit Torcello to climb the campanile, which had just reopened after several years’ restoration. As mentioned earlier, our first visit to Torcello in 1997 had been perfect.

On the way, we went to Burano and stayed for lunch. Afterwards we visited the main church, which reopened later than I had thought. By the time we reached Torcello, Dennis was irritated with me and agitated. He wouldn’t climb the campanile. He wouldn’t even go in the cathedral. Fuming, he sat and smoked. I decided we should return to the Zatterre right away. But we had just missed the boat. We waited….and waited ….and Dennis got more and more agitated.

His concern was we would be late for our gondola ride to dinner. This was to be our very first gondola ride. Dennis had never before wanted to pay the exorbitant fee. On a regular basis, we had taken traghetti (stand-up gondolas from point A to point B across the Grand Canal) but had never taken a sit-down view-ride up the Grand Canal.

Our train to Rome left at midnight, so our plan was to check out of the Artigianelli, leave our luggage by the front desk, and meet the group by the Gritti Palace vaporetto stop for the costumed ride to dinner.

We finally made our connections, returned to the monastery, and changed clothes with about fifteen minutes to spare to join the group. On the vaporetto we saw an American couple dressed in bumblebee costumes and asked them which location was the Gritti Palace stop. I should have asked where they were heading.

We got off. Nobody was there!!!

A lesson I’ve since learned is never to trust a web-site itinerary without first checking for any changes at the actual site. I had a printout of the scheduled event back when Dennis reserved it online. But details of the meeting place had changed without our knowledge.

We waited and waited. I checked with the doorman at the Gritti Palace Hotel. He knew nothing. (The event planners should have notified him!)

We fretted and walked around. After three quarters of an hour we both decided to try to find the restaurant near the fish market on the other side of the Rialto Bridge. We had already missed our paid gondola ride up the Grand Canal!

Eventually we found the restaurant and learned that they had waited about half an hour for us at the very next vaporetto stop by Harry’s Bar. We must have just missed seeing them going up the Grand Canal where we could have hailed them.

Dinner had already begun. People were in fine and colorful costumes. The bumblebee couple was sitting at the next table. Dennis seemed amazingly calm and carried on delightful conversations with everybody at our table. I was morose—and ended up getting quite drunk on wine.

After dinner we took the vaporetto back to the Accademia stop to go to the Artigianelli, change clothes, pick up our bags, and head to the stazione for our midnight train to Rome.

Although I had used the John at the restaurant, I badly needed to go again! But all the public restrooms were closed and padlocked. I couldn’t wait to make the Artigianelli, so in desperation I went to a calle near the Accademia Bridge to relieve myself. As drunk as I was— I was still ashamed— but couldn’t help myself.

At last we got on the train. It was filled with Italian soldiers, some of whom were coughing repeatedly. I didn’t sleep at all that night ---and ended up getting bronchitis after our return to San Francisco.

In Rome we checked into the Istituto Santa Giulianna Falconieri, the convent around the corner from Piazza Navona. We spent the entire day in the Piazza. Dennis smoked—and we both drank strong Italian coffee. Dennis struck up conversations with several painters. He bought one handsome painting of Venice by Alberto Tropeo (who later painted the marvelous commissioned portrait of India Pudding). I bought another view of Venice from him, also a painting of Piazza Navona itself.

In Venice, Dennis had bought his first painting of Venezia when I went to the train station to get a new transit card. I had lost my VeniceCard (good for transportation, some museums, and rest rooms) at a rest stop after we had reserved the rental car for the Sunday we visited the three Palladian villas. Dennis was quite amused at my predicament. You must purchase the all-inclusive VeniceCard out of the country, so I had to settle for a transit card alone. While I was gone, Dennis drank bottled Bellini cocktails in Piazza San Marco, and bought his painting of Venice from Picchio Santangelo (the same artist from whom he would later buy four paintings on our last day in Venice 28 February 2006). This painting had a wonderful sky, but the figures in the foreground were rather primitive.

When I returned with my new transit card, Dennis told me he had bought a painting, but that I couldn’t look at it until we got home – that this was a “Yes, Dear” moment.

Back in Rome, we headed to the Stazione Termini to take the train to the airport. We had plenty of time to make the flight. But what should have taken about an hour ended up being closer to three. We later heard that a young girl had been hit by a train! We just made the flight as the gate was closing. After 9/11 that wouldn’t have worked. (In October 2006 Dennis and I flew to Phoenix Arizona for Carl Noelke’s installation in the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. I had suggested taking BART to SFO. We were delayed three quarters of an hour near Daly City for construction and missed our plane even though we arrived 25 minutes before takeoff.)

On the flight from Rome, I struck up a conversation with a young American woman who was returning with her husband from their honeymoon in Italy. I related the story of our missed gondola ride. When the young woman got up to stretch her legs, Dennis turned to me very seriously and declared that he never wanted me to talk about that again – he never wanted to hear about it from any of our friends, especially Deb – that it was as painful to hear it retold, as it had been to experience it in the first place.

For several years I never did……..until Dennis was dying.

In Memorium ~ RICHARD WAGNER 1883

Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt/Time.Inc

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as they were later called). Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his works.

Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for contrapuntal texture, rich chromaticism, harmonies and orchestration, and elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with particular characters, locales or plot elements. Wagner pioneered advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, which greatly influenced the development of European classical music.

He transformed musical thought through his idea of Gesamtkunstwerk ("total artwork"), the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, epitomized by his monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876). To try to stage these works as he imagined them, Wagner built his own opera house, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.

In 1871, he decided on the small town of Bayreuth as the location of his new opera house. The Wagners moved there the following year, and the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus ("Festival Theatre") was laid. In order to raise funds for the construction, "Wagner Societies" were formed in several cities, and Wagner himself began touring Germany conducting concerts. However, sufficient funds were raised only after King Ludwig stepped in with another large grant in 1874. Later that year, the Wagners moved into their permanent home at Bayreuth, a villa that Richard dubbed Wahnfried ("Peace/freedom from delusion/madness", in German).

The Festspielhaus finally opened in August 1876 with the premiere of the Ring cycle and has continued to be the site of the Bayreuth Festival ever since.

Following the first Bayreuth festival Wagner spent a great deal of time in Italy where he began work on Parsifal, his final opera. The composition took four years, during which he also wrote a series of increasingly reactionary essays on religion and art.

Wagner completed Parsifal in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera. Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered through a series of increasingly severe angina attacks. During the sixteenth and final performance of Parsifal on 29 August, he secretly entered the pit during Act III, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi, and led the performance to its conclusion.

After the Festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. On 13 February 1883, Richard Wagner died of a heart attack at Ca' Vendramin Calergi, a 16th century palazzo [today the winter gambling Casino] on the Grand Canal. His body was returned to Bayreuth and buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried.

Franz Liszt's memorable piece for pianoforte solo, La lugubre gondola, evokes the passing of a black-shrouded funerary gondola bearing Richard Wagner's remains over the Grand Canal.

Text:wikipedia.com

I joined the Northern California chapter of the Wagner Society a few years ago primarily so that I might be able to go to Bayreuth some day. Otherwise, it would be totally out of reach.