Musica A Palazzo

We survived the Rick Steve’s Tour of Italy!  What a busy, busy tour.  We are now quietly located on the Greek Island of Santorini enjoying a little rest and great beauty.  Everywhere we look there is an amazing vista. I want to recall a couple of amazing days of the tour for you and will add a couple of blogs in the next few days.

The best night we had in Venice was spent in the Palazzo Barbarigo Minotto which is a 15th century Gothic Palace overlooking the Grand Canal.  Mike and I, in a free evening, went to see and hear a production of Verdi’s La Traviata, a tragic opera.  The Opera was put on by the Musica A Palazzo which is technically a traveling opera company although they consistently perform in the Barbarigo Palace in Venice.

Verdi’s opera is performed in three acts and all three acts took place in different rooms of the Palace.  We, the audience, moved with the performers after each act.  The really fun part of seeing the opera in this setting is the audience becomes part of the set and the singers interact with the audience frequently.  So for instance, in the first scene, we were all part of a great party.  The soprano hostess went around kissing the ladies in the audience in welcome as she was singing.  Later she handed out champagne glasses for her final toast in the scene.  At one point in the second act Mike found himself seated next to this same soprano as she sat at her writing desk composing a letter to her beloved.  I think he found it a little unnerving to be sitting next to this woman as she was pouring her heart out in song beside him!  It was truly a magical night!  We were not able to take pictures of the actual performance, but Rick Steve’s has a video of the night he visited.  Click here to get a glimpse of the Musica A Palazza along with a bit about St. Mark’s square in Venice: https://youtu.be/w5iFgVaAAos.

Just to add to the remarkable evening... we came out of the palazzo at the end of the night, heading back to our hotel, only to find the streets of Venice partially flooded!  We had to wade through water over our ankles to get back to the Main Street!  We moved through the streets to St. Mark’s Square

which we needed to cross to get back to our hotel and found the entire square flooded.  People (mostly young people) were splashing around the square in water up to mid calf in some places. There was no way to cross it without getting really wet, so we back-tracked and wove our way through other streets getting only a little lost on the way.  Many of the streets were wet and some of them flooded.  Luckily the street on which our hotel was situated was only wet!  The water had already receded.

You may have heard that Venice is sinking into the sea.  Venice is actually a series of Islands that were built on fallen trees.  It is sometimes called the floating city. There are a variety of reasons that contribute to the flooding problem.  If you want to see a few pictures of recent floods, click here:  https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/jun/16/history-flooding-sinking-city-venice-in-pictures.  The city is in the process of building an elaborate system of gates designed to close off the waters at high tide to try to address the problem.  Hopefully this beautiful city will still be around for our grandchildren.