Un bellissimo giorno…

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:21:09 +0000

What a day. Back on my travels, this time in Parma – and, kind of unexpectedly, Modena, but more of that later. I arrived in Milan late Sunday night and was treated to a rather unedifying display in the Stazione Centrale: two impossibly huge back-lit posters of Cristiano Ronaldo in his Armani cacks. I thought then, and I’m still thinking (when I can bear to), “Beefcake, to be sure, but what’s with the shaved armpits?” God, I am almost certain, does not shave his armpits. Luckily, the station is big enough that they were not visible from everywhere, which was just as well, as I had a long wait… Eventually, after an hour and a half in the station and about the same on the Intercity Notte, I arrived in Parma around 1am, and found it just as beautiful in the freezing midnight rain as it ever was.

Yesterday I went to the Biblioteca Palatina, which is housed in the imposing and bleak Palazzo della Pilotta.

The Pilotta in winter

I still find the scale of it astounding , perhaps all the more so because it seems to have so few windows. I was looking for a manuscript memorie of the Sanvitale family that had been helpfully cited by another scholar. Well, perhaps not so helpfully, because in the end I found that it wasn’t there. It appears that said scholar took information from the erroneous card catalogue (which concatenates the title of one manuscript with the author of another) and cited a nonexistent source. Whether the information s/he actually appears somewhere else, I shall never know. The only useful bit of work I accomplished was the transcription of a sweet poem dedicated to a singing nun, whose voice, the poet reckons, imparadisa i Chiostri (emparadises the cloisters). Ah, bless.

So, annoyed and very, very cold, I slunk back to my hotel room and hid under the covers, fully clothed, until I could get something to eat at a favorite bar down the road. Risotto con zucca e gorgonzola (pumpkin and blue cheese), which was gorgeously sticky and hot, and a glass of Parma’s best Lambrusco – it’s not cheap and nasty here, kids, it is softly fizzy, almost with a Guinness-like head, delicately blackcurranty and wonderful.

This morning I got up bright and early, and fuelled with one of Parma’s best croissant marmellata, I took the train to Modena and got to the Biblioteca Estense as it opened at 8.30. And with every book I ordered and then opened, I found new treasures, not to mention the value added by the fact that they let me photograph two whole books of polyphony which would have cost me 200 euros if I’d ordered digital reproductions from the UK. I found books dedicated to nuns; I found what appears to be another murdered singer, this time from the group assembled by Lucrezia d’Este; a man executed, executed for interfering with the good sisters, and to cap it all, a suggestion that the ladies of the concerto delle dame hung out in convents at the whim of the Duchess of Ferrara.

Quinto, Cara la vita mia

And no book of polyphony I have ever held is as beautiful as Lodovico Agostini’s Il nuovo Echo, an exquisite sixteenth-century version of a coffee-table book or a souvenir programme, printed on blue paper and no doubt distributed to Duke Alfonso’s luckiest guests as a memento of chi-chi Ferrarese culture. Lucky for me the library didn’t close until 7.15pm, and by 7.25 I was on a train back to Parma. Pizza and wine on the way, then joyfully back to the hotel, almost skipping down the Strada Cavour and, yes, giggling. Something always shows up.

So I guess I owe another big thank you to Sarah, without whom I might never have really got off the ground with my Ferrarese nuns. Ta, love, I’m having the time of my life again!

Shout, Sister, Shout » sarah dunant

Un bellissimo giorno…