On Vivaldi, Venice and Vomit

Classical music and ice hockey have held similar places in my life: my appreciation of these two art forms has always exceeded my ability to understand and participate in them...and anyone who doesn't recognize hockey as art, well, you clearly haven't seen Wayne Gretzky, Steve Yzerman or Denis Savard skate: savoir faire was everywhere.

But while I've long ago given up driving to a south suburban rink at two o'clock in the morning with buddies Dan and Glenn to endure two long, sweaty hours of physical abuse--usually involving me falling onto the ice in an infinite variety of painful contortions and a post-game 5:00 AM meal of White Castle hamburgers, Diet Coke and Tylenol--I have not given up the ghost when it comes to making sense of classical music. And I've graduated in middle-age to a late night meal of prosciutto, a glass of Tempranillo, and Motrin. Tylenol is so 1995.

So when Dana and I had the opportunity to hear a quintet featuring some of the best young musicians from across the Italian region of Veneto perform selections from the Venetian Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons at a 16th Century palazzo in Venice a few summers back...well, it sounded like heaven, even before I'd heard a single note.

The setting was fairy-tale mystical. Venezia's Palazzo delle Prigion (even an old prison sounds damn sophisticated in Italiano) was begun by Giovanni Antonio Rusconi in 1563 and continued in 1589 by Antonio da Ponte, who beat out Palladio and the great Michelangelo himself for the commission to design the Rialto Bridge across the Canale Grande (completed in 1591). The Palazzo delle Prigione--which held accused spy Casanova for a stint back in the 18th Century--is connected to the Palazzo Ducale by the Bridge of Sighs. The Palazzo Ducale served as home to the Venetian city-state's rulers centuries ago, when Venice was a global power at the center of east-west trade--and had the navy to prove it. Legend has it that the Bridge of Sighs, a covered bridge in stone spanning the narrow canal that separates the palace from the prison, evoked involuntary sighs from the condemned men who made the walk from the palace court to the prison, since the bridge's small windows afforded one last glimpse of their Bride of the Sea (as Venice was known) and, perhaps, friends and family, before the convicted faced life in prison--or worse.

Back in the 21st Century, Dana and I chatted with some travelers from Switzerland as we waited in line to enter the prison, mainly about the hilarious manner in which Italians form a line, not unlike the manner in which the painter Jackson Pallock might choose to create a painting entitled Line.

Our concerto in the prison was organized by Veneto's Orchestra Collegium Ducale, and the damp, stone-walled room in which the show was to be performed--a large windowless space of stone, with about seventy-five folding chairs set up before the familiar black music stands you remember from music class as a kid--was illuminated mostly by candles. We took our seats in about the fourth row, quite satisfied, slowly cooling down in the darkness, and eager to see these college kids show us what they could do. It's impossible to be in this setting and not feel like two of the luckiest people in the world.

What we didn't know then was that trouble was lurking in the halls of the Palazzo delle Prigion, and headed our way.

Just seconds after the quintet launched into Vivaldi, violins ablaze with frenzied Baroque energy in the flickering prison, all for our pleasure after a long, exhausting day, two well-dressed men who had not bathed since Casanova slept here more than 250 years ago quietly slipped into the room and took seats directly behind us.

Dana noticed it first, shifting uncomfortably in her seat about a minute before her eyes communicated to me her realization of the unfortunate situation in which we found ourselves. And make no mistake about it: this isn't hyperbole. The odor, which to this day I cannot describe without feeling a little nauseous, seemed to surround you physically first, and then, rather than enter through your nostrils, it carefully seeped through your pours, so that by the time you smelled the stench, you had the definite sensation that it was both on you and in you, and just might be impossible to get off.

Now I understand that most people around the world do not bath daily, and do not use the multitude of hygiene products that nearly all north Americans and many Europeans use. And I think Dana and I, in our travels, work hard to accept if not embrace the little differences in culture that make travel abroad interesting and rewarding. But this wasn't cultural.

It was metaphysical.

When I looked at Dana again, she had her purse open and her head buried inside of it in an attempt to use the handbag the way Dough Boys back in the First World War employed their gas masks to survive the lethal mustard cloud floating across no man's land toward them. Whereas the Dough Boys possessed a small life-saving charcoal filter in their masks, Dana had to settle for the recently purchased Italian scented soaps still in her bag. And while the brave men of the Great War sought occasional refuge in the trenches, here we were, exposed fully...sitting ducks caught between the lines as an insidious enemy poured over-the-top.

And so we agreed to move, without speaking a word, with only a slight nod (Dana nodding with nearly her entire head stuffed into her bag, so that it appeared from my vantage point that the bag was nodding at me), and departed for a place to stand against the back wall on the other side of the room.

At first the new position seemed a vast improvement. We could actually see the performers better, and the air, well, it seemed fresher. We redirected our attention to Vivaldi, as the slow, quiet melodies seemed to drift about the dark room as if playing with the shadows thrown by the players' movements, hinting, from time-to-time, at the anticipated joy of spring ready to burst forth in music.

But in a matter of minutes, the odor returned, as foul and fierce as before. Either the putrid, rotten, sweaty gas had, by this time, encompassed the entire room, or it was entrenched in the fiber of our clothing. Or--and this always crosses one's mind in this situation-- could the smell possibly be emanating from us?

We tried to focus on the concerto, determined to stick it out to the end, and while we rallied just enough to do so--and while the night engendered a deeper appreciation of Vivaldi, great respect for the talent of the fine young musicians of the Collegium Ducale, and fond memories--in the end, we escaped the Palazzo delle Prigion just in time, sucking in the Adriatic-cooled evening air after the show as if we'd been holding our breath for the last 90 minutes.

We were relieved not to have vomited to Vivaldi in Venice, and left wondering as we walked back across Piazza San Marco toward Locanda al Leon, now eager for a deep sleep (sleep in Venice, like everything else, is somehow sweeter), Is it possible that no one else even noticed that?

For Americans, one of the most exciting things about European travel is that Europeans seem to experience their day-to-day lives in a much more sensory way than we do. The fresh produce markets, the wines tied inextricably to particular plots of land, the music, the cafes, the fashion, the food, the art, the grand public squares full of people savoring life and the quiet, narrow Medieval lanes where locals stroll every evening re-affirming their sense of place, of family, of home. The sights, sounds, feel and smells of Europe are a result of people soaking up life through every sense available to them, rich but real, simple but beautiful, and always in full color. Europe--and Italy, especially--is a place where even the foul odors come with a little more intensity and a little less shame.

And I suppose changing that could change everything.