Neapolitan Musicians: Gabriela Rinaldi and Max Carola, and friends

Sunday, February 22, still in Naples, and the highlight of our week - you thought it was Vesuvius perhaps? - No, it was dinner with our landlady and her family. 

Gabriella Rinaldi and Max Carola are musicians, from an old Neapolitan family, living just upstairs from us in a beautiful big flat, wonderful people. We ate and ate, talked and talked far into the night.

Max primarily does production and post-production, mainly these days in Berlin (the European center for contemporary music; he says it's the big scene these days, like San Francisco in the 1960s). Here is a link to a youtube video he and Gabriella did together: Max and Gabriella.

Gabriella has a bigger web presence than Max, such as her business Voce e Canto (here's the link: voceecanto.it) and her own music in many youtube videos. A couple examples of her music, you can click on them: Partenodance Rhapsody, and Borderline 

Their other guest was a Dutch oboist moving to Umbria to start a b&b/arts colony. Onno Verschoor, very charming guy. You can read about his summer project at this link: summer course in Perugia. It just sounds like so much fun!

A pleasure to meet the extended family (says Julianne), eat Neapolitan winter food, be among kindly generous people who take music seriously.  We have now been introduced to the music of Pino Daniele, who mixes Neapolitan music with R&B.  He died recently at too young of an age.  To see a video of him playing with Eric Clapton, click on this link: Pino Daniele with Eric Clapton

Our hosts, Max Carola and Gabriella Rinaldi, produced a concert by Richard Galliano at the Vesuvius Crater last summer, which you can hear by clicking this link: Richard Galliano at Vesuvius

Jazz accordion--seems like a contradiction, but it sure does work.

We were charmed and impressed by their openhearted hospitality...and of course by the food. Spaghetti with homemade sauce (the primi), sausages (the secondi), broccoletti (the contorno), and cake with almonds and orange peel (the dolce). Oh, that was good! Max has a particular way of handling pasta and sauce, which our friend Donna Ellefson, who has been with us on these adventures in Naples, has set about learning. We all want to be Italian cooks.

We have to do this posting with no pictures, but I hope the music links make up for that.

by Nancy and Julianne

CAMPI FLEGREI : Greek settlement, active volcano. Friday, February 20.

Nancy in the Solfatara Volcano Crater

Earliest Greeks, Roman settlements and civil wars, agriculture producing food fit for gods, all set in an active volcanic area.  We spent the day filling our eyes with beauty and our minds with mysteries  Much more than we can describe but we will try to capture a few highlights.  Julianne here using italics.  Nancy will weigh in with standard type.

Campi Flegrei is a large suburb west of Naples which was the site of the region's first urban settlers -- Greeks at Cumae -- and remains an active volcanic area. The geology alone is remarkable--we were able to walk in the crater of an active volcano -- Solfatara -- and look into the steam vents. Roman ruins everywhere, from Nero's mother's grave to an amphitheater still used for performances.  My target site was the early Greek urban settlement, Cumae, along the sea coast. Everywhere we looked was glorious agriculture with every bit of fertile volcanic soil used for the products the area is famous for.


Friday, we went southwest from Naples to a series of sites with the general name Campi Flegrei. It's plate tectonics made visible, as little volcanoes rose up, left their mark, and died, leaving behind rich volcanic soil and circular lakes. Not all dead, though -- Solfatara steams and belches safely enough that people live quite nearby. Roman ruins and the castles of later conquerors. The beautiful sea, the jagged landscape, the views.


We saw so many stunning things during that one day we are brain-dead trying to comprehend it all. Even more than in other areas within the center of the Roman Empire, layers of occupation and complex excavations make it hard to keep things in mental order.  Here, for example, many of the key conflicts between Pompey and Caesar played out in the loyalties of the populations -- I am not even trying to capture any of it. Augustus and Marc Anthony -- another day.

Solfatara volcano

The volcanic crater is a park with paths but the paths are right on the ash and barely fence off the bubbling mud.  The rim encloses about 5 hectares of park but on the top of the rim and the outer side of the rim are homes, car dealers, hospitals among the steam vents.  It must be horrid in the summer.  Now, it was pleasantly warm, a sunny day.  Sulfur smell, steam around your toes--a fine day. The million plus people who live in the Naples area have an evacuation plan.  Good idea.

Early Greek settlers at Cumae

The destination for me was Cumae, a hill-top town which was the first urban settlement in the area, a Greek city eventually used by the Romans. Ongoing excavations continue to reveal more about the town and its original Greek and later Roman inhabitants.  As Greek cities in what we now identify as Greece increased in population, they often split and part of the population left to form new cities elsewhere.  The first inhabitants of Cumae settled in about 800 BC, bringing with them their vines, seeds and technologies.  They were just a bit earlier than the settlers in Paestum though Paestum has the more dramatic remains.  The Cumaeans were from Euboea.  They were literate, using the Greek Euboean script but not that much has been recovered.

[Euboean script was an earlier variant of Greek before the Ionian script became standard.  It was introduced to the Italian islands and peninsula and adopted by the Etruscans.  There are some beautiful examples in the branch of the National Museum in Rome that is behind the Baths of Diocletian.]

There were other people living in the area, also farmers but not urban dwellers.  A complex pre-history includes inhabitants from the earliest humans but with an interruption between 4000-3000 BC when Solfatara eploded, affecting miles and miles of territory.  The Greek town of Cumae was joined by other Greek settlements throughout the area. but the earlier inhabitants continued to live in the area as well.  Eventually the Greek cities as well as the other populations were brought into the realm of the Romans between 300-200 BC.

Cumae includes a strategic hilltop and surrounding area of coast and fertile valley which looks like the crater of a larger volcano.  The area is defensible and has been used so until recently--an American naval base was nearby.  Temples to Greek gods were reused by Romans and Christians. Cumae was a site where medieval church scholars reconciled the writings of the ancients with Christianity.  Virgil set his work here as did Dante and many other ancient-to-Renaissance authors. It is easy to see why it captures the imagination as well as meeting the practical needs of people of different eras.  Farmers now are growing vegetables on the edges of the excavations; the original Greek and then Roman road is a major regional highway.  I just love this stuff.  I could poke around for days.

One of the bits of the site which captures my imagination and that of many of our ancestors is a crack in the earth known as Sibyl's Cave.  Sibyl was a soothsayer consulted by many comers for more than a thousand years.  In a dispute with one of the gods she won eternal life but forgot to ask for eternal youth so shriveled to nothing but a voice.  She was as famous as the oracle at Delphi back in the day.

Entrance to Sibyl's cave

The Sibyl's Cave at the entrance to the hilltop of Cumae is the crack in the earth

where Aeneas entered Hades in Virgil's epic. Later, Dante set part of the Divine Comedy here with Virgil as the guide to hell, entering here.  Sadly, the gate to hell was closed when we visited.  The surface of the path looked like it was paved in asphalt, not good intentions. We were not able to consult the oracle--our futures remain murky.

From the top -- where used to be Jove's temple, then a Christian basilica -- one can see along the coast and inland. Beauty and a view of the incredible agriculture in these volcanic fields. 

A particular grape variety, grown in this specific territory is much appreciated in Italy and by us too.  Falanghina (the grape variety) of Campi Flegrei. Italy has upwards of 2000 specific terroirs which produce unique wine. Unlikely that we could ever find it elsewhere but what a treat.  And a reward at the end of the day: beauty in our eyes, beauty for our tongues.

Our day's end beverage: Falanghina grape from Campiflegre

by Julianne, photos mainly by Nancy

NAPLES: Wandering a Beautiful City, Eating Wonderful Food, February 21 - 22

Saturday, it rained. We knew it would (says Nancy), and planned to stay in Naples. Walks in the heart of Naples, lunch in the Spanish quarter with wonderful seafood, visits to churches, a quiet day really, and leftover pizza for supper, delicious.

In the Spanish Quarter, narrow alleys and
delicious seafood in a little restaurant
named Taverna di Buongiusto

The original Greek city walls (says Julianne), "precepe" Christmas scenes which Naples is famous for, narrow streets with a mix of gothic and romanesque architecture. Strong reminders that Naples was under the French influence for centuries until Italian unification.  Naples looks different from other Italian places we have traveled so far.

Precepe-a nativity scene in Naples old town.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph are under the arch on the left.

I found myself making odd juxtapositions in images. How about Dante and girl graffiti? It was the hands that struck me.

Dante gestures

Girl caution

Oh, the day was wet, dark, not totally delightful. But though the sun didn't show, images did, small helps to my mood.

And some finely decorative bits. Chiesa Santa Chiara is supposed to be a great, nay, grand church, and significant in the history of Naples. Very old, it had been remodeled in the baroque style in the 17th century and was full of curly decorative stucco and happy statues of baby angels. But in WWII, as the Allies forced their way into Naples against the Nazis, this church was bombed to a shell. Maybe not even a shell, maybe just a pile of rubble. 

When it was rebuilt, the intent was to go back to the Gothic original. Frankly, it's a barn. Huge, grey, desperately plain - probably there was no money. The windows are simple and good, the rest you can't stand. 

But then, out back, behind the church and basically untouched by the bombing, this cloister garden of majolica tile. Our guidebook dismisses this garden, but I think in summer it would be very calm and restful. In this weather that we had, it felt pretty chilly in spite of the lemon trees bearing yellow fruit. 

I found a wonderful and unexpected delight in the dreary weather - Chiesa Santa Anna di Lombardi is off the beaten path, has a policy against photography (good luck with that), and basically seems torn between wanting to keep its privacy and wanting people to realize its great treasure, a painted ceiling by Giorgio Vasari.

I felt I could snatch only a single photo of this very pleasing ceiling.
Vasari did the large paintings, others the spritely miniatures.

Vasari wrote "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects," the first art historical writing about the visual arts. I quote Wikipedia: 

"Often called 'the first art historian', Vasari invented the genre of the encyclopedia of artistic biographies .... He was the first to use the term 'Renaissance' (rinascita) in print, though an awareness of the ongoing 'rebirth' in the arts had been in the air since the time of Alberti, and he was responsible for our use of the term Gothic Art, though he only used the word Goth which he associated with the 'barbaric' German style. The Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts."

This book is his great contribution, though it has many flaws, such as favoring his fellow Florentines, ignoring especially Venetian artists such as Titian, and quoting improbable gossip and stories. It's the reason we remember him. 

As you can see from my photo, he wasn't a bad painter. I like the light in his images, and his color palette. This was a bright spot for me in the drab day.


Sunday, it still rained. We went to the Archaeological Museum, which was fine enough - part was closed for lack of staff, naturally the part we wanted to see the most, but oh well. We looked at art in the subways, and went up to the top of Vomero hill for lunch at a pizzeria that wasn't really - it was a white-tablecloth restaurant with wonderful seafood. 

I (Julianne) was the only one of us three who managed to see much of the frescoes from Pompeii before that gallery closed. Strong color contrast of red-orange and blue-green in the frescoes. They used copper for the blue and showed a little pot of copper and painting tools which were found in Pompeii during excavations.

Boats on the Pompeii waterfront-fresco detail

Satyr with one-eyed creature,
fresco detail from Pompeii

The mosaics are superb--birds among other things. Much to see and absorb.     Although open on Sunday, budget woes do not allow enough staff to keep most galleries open.

Detail of mosaic showing sacred ibis and Egyptian geese

Pompeii mosaic with cat and birds

Fishes and ducks

Octopus, eel, squid, and various fishes

Mmmm - can we think about seafood?

Vomero is our neighborhood--steeper than San Francisco.  Renaissance defensive castles on lower levels, palaces next up, Arte Moderne reminiscent to us of Barcelona at the next upper turn of the road, up to the top with early 20 C.  All architectural styles I love.  

To get home from the Museum, we rode Metro Linea 1, an engineering feat of the late 20 C.  I am impressed that a subway can climb such a steep hill, which it does by circling around inside the mountain.  Wow.  I wonder if there is anywhere else in the world that has built a subway under such conditions? The stations are beautifully designed and decorated--we wanted to hop on and off at each one but we were hungry.  Art? Food? We got both at the Vanvitelli stop on the top.  Bus 128 down the hill to home--sunny now with gorgeous views.

Entrance to our metro station with elegant lights.

'Folk decoration' of the subway cars
photo by Donna Hecht Ellefson

Image in Museo station

Image in Vanvitelli station

Sunday, home again, and the highlight of the week - you thought it was Vesuvius perhaps? - dinner with our landlady and her family. 

Gabriella Rinaldi and Max Carola. They are musicians, an old Neapolitan family, living just upstairs from us in a beautiful big flat, wonderful people. Their other guest a Dutch oboist moving to Umbria to start a b&b/arts colony. Onno Verschoor, very civil guy. We ate and ate, talked and talked far into the night.

A pleasure to meet the extended family, eat Neapolitan winter food, be among kindly generous people who take music seriously.  We have now been introduced to the music of Pino Daniele, who mixes Neapolitan music with R&B.  He died recently at too young of an age.  To see a video of him playing with Eric Clapton, click on this link: Pino Daniele with Eric Clapton

Our hosts, Max Carola and Gabriella Rinaldi, produced a concert by Richard Galliano at the Vesuvius Crater last summer, which you can hear by clicking this link: Richard Galliano at Vesuvius

Jazz accordion--seems like a contradiction, but it sure does work.

Max primarily does production and post-production, mainly these days in Berlin (the European center for contemporary music; he says it's the big youth scene these days). Here is a link to a youtube video he and Gabriella did together: Max and Gabriella.

Gabriella has a web presence, such as her business Voce e Canto (here's the link: voceecanto.it) and her own music in many youtube videos.

Monday morning, Donna and I went for a long walk, and then Julianne and I came back to Rome. It was a perfectly nice train, easy trip, hamburgers for supper, and realized the next morning the coffee is out, there's no bread, yogurt went bad, and so forth. Oh well, the week was worth the re-entry.

As we are back in our much-loved Roman apartment, I find that Naples has latched on to my heart.  It is hard to capture the essence, it was only one week. But I find myself unwilling to delete the Giranapoli bus app from my phone.

by Julianne and Nancy

PAESTUM, an Early Greek City in Italy, Thursday, February 19

More wine! More song! Painting from Paestum

Thursday, we went south to Paestum, the remains of an early Greek city - the Greeks were the first urban-dwellers in Italy, hiving off colonies as their cities grew too big to stay home. Eventually they were occupied and replaced by the Lucanians, who were overrun by the Romans, who left their mark in the expansive Forum and an amphitheater, among other buildings now reduced to foundations - the surviving temple buildings are Greek.

Paestum (says Julianne) was the first Greek city on the Italian peninsula and has three stunning Greek temples still standing much intact.  The settlers were from Euboea.  A Roman stadium, the Roman road and the floors and foundations of living areas remain in the mix at the site. Great museum too, with enough of the prehistory to identify human occupation back to the earliest days--Achulean hand axes up to copper blades before the Greeks arrived with their grape vines and incredible pottery.

My desire (says Nancy) was to sit in the sun and paint. I didn't do as much walking around and studying the remains as Julianne and Donna did, but tramped directly to the large temple of Neptune, and puzzled how to indicate its immense size when my paper is only 6x12 inches. Isn't that often the problem with painting? The world is so big, my imagery is so small. 

Finally I sat on some stone remains in front of the temple and painted what I saw gazing neither up nor down, but horizontally to the horizon. Here it is, imperfect but addressing the question:

Paestum, two temples. Hera on the left, Neptune on the right.

Donna came by and told me I was sitting on the sacrificial altar, where the priests killed animals for all to see. So then I looked around, and took pictures of the whole temple.

Temple of Neptune from a distance, Hera beyond

Julianne's picture of me painting.
I'm the speck in the lower right.
That temple is big.

Notice the temple elements in the picture above. Up under the eaves are flat areas separated by vertical elements in threes. Those verticals are called triglyphs while the carved pictures that were between them are metopes. The metopes are missing of course, but a few from the temple of Hera were preserved and found their way into the museum. Wikipedia says: "The oldest [ever found] are the metopes of Heraion at the mouth of the Sele at Poseidonia, preserved at the National Archaeological Museum of Paestum." Archaic language. Heraion = temple of Hera. Poseidonia is the earlier Greek name for Paestum, which is the Roman name. Sele is the local river. The metopes are from 500 BCE, 2500 years ago.

Metope from the Temple of Hera

Prancing lion from a tomb painting

Life-size marble head found in Temple of Neptune.
Museum speculates the body was plaster,
and disintegrated over time.

Aphrodite dancing on a jar. Winged figures
and fanciful plant forms.

Having looked through the museum, I have to say we liked the art of Paestum. Lots of paintings on the stone faces of the tombs and the caskets inside the tombs, lots of pottery. The citizens of Paestum lived their lives in decorative surroundings.

Having been driven around, upon return to Naples we had enough energy to walk around central Naples and watch the sunset with beverages in hand.  You can still get wine made from the Greek grape variety--Turco di Graeca-which is grown on the upper slopes east of Paestum.  Wine report--delicious.

Castel dell'Ovo from the bar of the Intercontinental

Pizza at 50 Kalo for dinner.  Yes--Naples is justly famous for pizza.  Yes--thick crust.  This restaurant is part of the Italian movement to celebrate local products and slow food excellence.  In a city of excellent pizza, when we left people were lined up outside the door.  Luckily, we have the American habit of eating early and got in as the place opened, at 7:30. 

See pictures of our pizza at 50 Kalo in Julianne's post about pizza in Naples.

Then home by taxi and fall into bed looking for tomorrow and Campi Fleigre.

By Nancy and Julianne

VESUVIUS and HERCULANEUM, Wednesday, February 18

Wednesday, we went up Vesuvius, which was cold and windy. We hiked around the crater part way, peering down at the mists of emissions and the flat silent floor where pressure is quietly building. Then we went down to Herculaneum to see what the mountain could do.

"We" would be me (Nancy), Julianne, and Donna Ellefson, who didn't have much trouble talking us into coming to Naples. We took the public Circumvesuviana train to Herculaneum the city, where we met our guide Roberto Adinolfi, a geologist certified on Vesuvius. He certainly knew what he was talking about and was able to put the present in context of the past and future. He also knew how to wangle us a ride from the parking lot up to the guide's hut/staging post from which we absolutely had to hike. 

Roberto and Donna at the guide's hut. Did I mention it was cold?

Julianne, however, stayed in the hut. She hadn't brought her jacket or gloves or hat, and she wasn't about to venture out in the wind that seemed like half a hurricane. 

Vesuvius--cold, windy.  One bird, a jay. (this is Julianne speaking in italics) I like the general idea of visiting a volcano and Nancy has had the desire to do this since forever or so. Vesuvius looms above the Bay of Naples, visible from everywhere.  Puts out steam.  OK--good enough.  Looked over the edge. Can we go down yet?

European Jay, picture from The Guardian

Everybody knows about the eruption in 79 CE that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, Stabiae and probably a lot more villages still deep in the earth. One hears less about more recent eruptions, for instance the latest one, in 1944 right after the Allies drove the Germans out. A river of lava flowed downhill but did little damage; American planes took a lot of pictures and thus our guide was able to show us images of a new dome (later collapsed) building inside the 79 CE crater, which itself had blown the top off a previous, bigger crater. 

J here.  The 1944 eruption did destroy the funicular which carried tourists up to the top.  The opening of this funicular was celebrated in one of the world's all time favorite songs, which you can hear by clicking this link:  Pavarotti singing Funiculi, funicula


We were also introduced to the work of another artist who had a concert at the top of Vesivius in 2014.  Our hosts Max Carola and Gabriella Rinaldi produced a concert by jazz acordionist Richard Galliano, which you can hear by clicking on this link: Galliano at Vesuvius
  
Good concert.

River of lava from 1944 hardened in place - Naples beyond

Back to blowing tops. Doesn't Vesuvius sound like Mt. St. Helens, our own volcano south of Seattle that blew in 1980? Mt. St. Helens blew its top off too, and a new small dome has been building inside the remnants of the old. 

But the Italian volcano is on a much larger scale, bigger altogether and more dangerous with all those people right nearby. Also, Vesuvius is much more active than MSHelens, erupting perhaps 42 times since 79 CE.

Just now Vesuvius is quiescent, which is alarming to people who know about the habits of volcanoes - it should be belching more steam and making small movements, but it doesn't. This means that since 1944, pressure has been slowly building inside the magma chamber far below, prevented from release by hardened lava plugs in the pathways to the surface, and what next? 

The small steam vents are not enough to relieve pressure

Interior of the caldera, showing strata of ash among the lava flows

The highest point we reached. The French kids
 just kept going. Up around that corner, 
icy wind and no reward, so we quit.
This is looking south, toward Pompeii, 
if you could see it through the haze.

View across the caldera, which is 2.5 km around. 
This odd-looking object with advertising stickers 
is an instrument to record movement. 
There are such recorders all around the rim
and in the bottom of the caldera, deep below the rim.

I like mountains. I liked hiking up to Everest Base Camp in 1997 in spite of altitude sickness. I liked camping overnight in the Mount Saint Helens ashfall with geologists and botanists in 1983, when the streams were running sulphur yellow and for a miracle fireweed was popping up all around. Even as an undergraduate I liked climbing the little rock falls left over from glaciers in Wisconsin. 

But Vesuvius? Not easy to love, and it's not just the weather. Vesuvius feels bleak and demanding. There's a lot of small-scale rockfalls and erosion on this mountain, which keeps vegetation mostly at bay, though there are lichens that digest the minerals in the stone. Still it's very barren, and not friendly. Not to mention, it will kill some people in future. But then, I might have liked it better in the summer.

HERCULANEUM

In Herculaneum, warmer, more birds.  Also filled with French schoolchildren--this is their winter holiday and they are everywhere. Sort of the 13-15 year old range.  Perfectly nice kids.  I thought France had a low birth rate but the evidence of my eyes says baby boom.

The people of Herculaneum didn't have a chance, between the poison gas, the superheated steam, and the fall of cinders and ash. Probably they hardly knew what hit them. Here's how deep it got:

The depth of burial at Herculaneum.
The bottom was the seashore.

Old city, new city. Not terribly different, actually,
as to style. This view from near the entry.

At the port, people huddled together, as far as possible
from the mountain, but trapped by the sea.

Most of the beautiful art that was found at Herculaneum got taken to Naples and elsewhere, but a few pieces remain in place. We didn't see everything - too tired after Vesuvius to give Herculaneum its due. But, here are a few.

I'm going to guess that the guy
on the right with lance and sword is not
doing murder but a medical procedure.
A very opaque piece as far as meaning goes.
Not big, maybe 12 x 18, wall-hung.

Cute little boys probably from a larger sculptural
group, perhaps a fountain?

A beautiful mosaic of very tiny tesserae,
carefully designed and made, hung like a painting,
and again, opaque to me in its meaning.

We looked for how people lived, but of course it's a little hard to feel your way into ancient life.

Look how well the mortar lasted
even with the clay fill eroded away.  

Store room

It seems that many houses had no kitchens,
and people regularly ate at fast-food joints.
This is one. Fire in the hole, food in pots on top.

And then, the French school kids having fun, as well they might, out of school.

It's not important, just for fun.

We were glad to hop on the Circumvesuviana, then Metro Line 2 to Amadeo, and Bus C27 to our cozy apartment.  Outside our gate a grocery store with provolone made with "fleur di latte" a milk from one specific area near Sorrento. Delicious cheese, bread, prosciutto and wine.  Not cold anymore.  All good.

By Nancy and Julianne