Light and Water

Italians certainly have a particular type of flair. I originally wanted to say a flair for the spectacular but that is only because the Italian word for show is spettacolo. What Italians think of as entertaining and beautiful is often rather tacky and just involves a lot of smoke and mirrors. Italians are also suckers for fireworks. I'm not going to deny that fireworks are entertaining, but I have seen a few fireworks shows here and just weren't all that big, especially for things put on by the city, and Italians were in awe. Maybe I'm spoiled being an American and having grown up watching fireworks that are just a lot bigger, or, to go along with my general thoughts towards Italians, they are much less mature than their age would let on and are much more easily amused by flashing lights. (That's going a little far, guess I'm having a bitter week towards Italians, happens every now and then)

This whole train of thought came from a show last night that one of my roommates was going to see and I tagged along. It was in Piazza del Popolo and was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Italian electric company ACEA. This was the third year in a row they have put on the show (not clear the reason for the past two years) and apparently it has grown last year. The description of the show is 'Water and Light', vague right? It started with an extremely over-handed description of Rome as the city of light and water, talking about the sweeping effects they have on the population (Italians have a thing for over exaggerating a whole lot).

When it was almost dark the show began. The first piece was a group of 4 women dancing on stage with another suspended from a wire connected to the top of the Pincio gliding over the audience, pictured below.



Throughout the show there was a thin waterfall on the back of the stage that they used as the screen, which gave everything they projected a Monet-esque impression. Not many of my pictures of it came out, but the one below, the face of Botticelli's Venus, turned out reasonably well.



The show consisted of an odd assortment of songs (all in English, except for 2 Spanish songs) that ranged from Swan Lake to Paul Simon that were all accompanied by various dancers. When they played a piece from Swan Lake there were two sets of ballet dancers off to the sides of the stage that were beautiful, but that wasn't enough for the Italians. They needed a giant balloon swan that, for me, really took away from the grace of the music and the dancers. When they played Paul Simon's Under African Skies there were only two dancers, a small girl wearing a flowing white shirt and pants, mirrored by a wiry black guy wearing pants that matched hers. The first half of the song they danced in front of the water fall/screen and then at a certain point they started dancing under it, dramatically changing the fit of their clothes and their overall appearance. It was the only piece to me that did not seem largely over done, they dancers were great and they were allowed to speak (well dance) for themselves without any other distractions.

Another song they played was the Statler Brothers' Counting Flowers on the Wall which was accompanied by 8 Marylin Monroe look-alikes, skirts blown from below and all.



The final piece was a dozen or so dancers with staffs lit on both ends dancing on the central stage, along with changing lights illuminating the hill behind them. And the grand finale was, of course, fire works.



Rome itself is a theater with stages, small and large, scattered all across the city. Piazza del Popolo is perhaps the largest of those stages and for this reason is often used for large events. The events I have seen to date have merely set up a stage in the piazza and that's it, but this event incorporated the entire setting into the show. The hill above Piazza del Popolo, the Pincio, has been covered with gardens since the Roman Empire, but it was not until the piazza was built by Valadier in the 1820's the the hill was incorporated into the scene (it was originally separated from the piazza by the cloister of the church Santa Maria del Popolo). His neoclassical design makes the hill look almost like a flat wall towering over the piazza, when, in fact, it is very deep and is crisscrossed by a road leading up to the top as well as smaller foot paths. This show, especially at the end, utilized the depth of the hill (as well as its height) to great effect.