Sometimes I talk with a friend far away and they say, "Has the heat broken there yet?" and I say, "Nope. But the forecast is for cooler days soon." This has been true for many weeks now, but the promised cooler weather has never come.

I am a person who generally loves the warmth and even though I lived in Colorado for decades, I never liked skiing because of the cold. (And the terror.) And shoveling icy sidewalks is an enormous drag. And if I never have to drive anywhere in a blizzard ever again, it will still be too soon.

But I miss snow.

I found myself last week gently sweating while sitting still, lost in a lovely daydream -- a warm log fire, hot chocolate, a big old armchair with a fluffy blanket, a good book, and outside the twilight windows, snow.

So Jonathan and I are planning a trip to Vienna when his school lets out for winter break. The Magic Flute will be playing at the Vienna Opera House, where it premiered with Mozart himself conducting it. The Christmas Market will be happening. You can take organized coffee and pastry tours of the city, going from cafe to cafe to cafe. I have found us a quaint little hotel. There might be snow.

Highlights of the week:

1. We took the train to Milan to see the opera of "The Little Prince" at La Scala and all along the way, we saw the lovely rose-colored and terra cotta and lemon-yellow houses outside the train windows.

2. I drank a 22 euro gin and tonic on the rooftop terrace of our hotel in Milan. I only drank one.

3. We knew the opera was for children, but we hadn't realized it was also by children -- La Scala has a school for little budding singers. My two favorites were the ones dressed as asteroids in big globe costumes who had to stand on stage and revolve for a good twenty minutes. I almost died from the adorableness.

4. There was a harpist at breakfast in the hotel who played "Moon River," "What a Wonderful World," and "Over the Rainbow."

5. When we got home, Jonathan had to leave almost immediately for a conference in Rome, so I texted him some pictures of me later that day. Or at least I intended to. Somehow, I managed instead to send them to our neighbor Fabio across the street. Now I have to hide inside my house for the rest of my life.

 

Quite an uproar at the opera Friday night!

Jonathan and I went to Torre del Lago to see the premiere of this season's new production of "La Boheme" at the annual Puccini Festival. As one does.

It was a lovely evening. The theatre is open to the stars and the breeze comes off the lake. So elegant, so genteel, so sedate.

But no!

Apparently, a right-wing undersecretary of culture, recently appointed by the new Fascist Prime Minister, had denounced the production, whining that by setting the opera during the French student riots of 1968 (rather than its original setting of the French Revolution of 1830), The Puccini Festival Society was egregiously mixing art with politics -- something he only agrees with when the politics in question are right-wing.

The conductor of the orchestra, who had not been part of the production but was flown to conduct in only two days before it started, apparently agreed with the Fascist undersecretary. (When we told the regulars down at the pub about it, they were vociferously united in their disdain for the undersecretary, who is, they say, a buffoon. "Even a donkey," said Nonno, who is one week shy of his 89th birthday and, therefore, holds the place of highest honor and respect among the all-day drinkers, "Even a donkey, if you let it loose in the street, has sense enough to find its way home. The undersecretary hasn't got the brains of an ass!")

So the conductor, an apparent fan of the Fascists, to show his displeasure with the production, walked to his podium at the beginning of the show and put a black blindfold over his eyes, saying tat he didn't want to even see such a travesty. (There was also a fair amount of xenophobia mixed in here as well because the set designer was apparently French -- the horrors!) When he did this, the audience erupted in boos and catcalls. (Side note: one should not piss off opera aficionados -- many of them apparently have very strong lungs.) 

Jonathan and I were completely bewildered. We knew none of the backstory and only managed to catch the conductor's speech up to "I'm wearing this blindfold because..." We are so consistently clueless that Jonathan said later we are like the people who show up to the book burning with s'mores.

After the intermission, when the director reappeared for the second half, the screaming was even louder: "Vergogna! Buffone! Scemo! Vai via! Leccaculo!" ("Shame! Buffoon! Stupid! Go away! Ass licker!") "This is getting ugly," I said to Jonathan, still completely in the dark. "Is this where they start throwing things?" The chairs, however, were all attached to the ground.

At the end of the production, the cast on stage held up signs: "There is no Planet B," "Look Up," "Save the Earth" and other pro-climate-activism slogans. The crowd cheered and clapped for the cast and crew, but when the conductor came out to take his bow, almost all the clapping stopped, the yelling was deafening, and most of the audience very pointedly high-tailed it towards the exits. The conductor continued to take bows to a miniscule scattering of applause as elegantly-clad opera buffs stormed towards the exits.

Jonathan and I tried to eavesdrop on the conversations around us on the way out, but to no avail. We feared that this negative response was perhaps to the rather mild gesture towards climate change activism, but even for someone who just published a book about people going berserk over art, it seemed to be a disproportionate reaction to a sign saying "Look Up" (although I guess no more than the things I wrote about in "Outrage" -- people purposely stabbing Impressionist paintings with their umbrellas and fighting a duel over The Rite of Spring. I wrote a blogpost for Stanford about how the things I talk about in the book are back with us with regard to banning books, drag shows and abortions -- the link for that is here: https://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2023/07/anthony-comstock-rides-again.html#more )

The next day we went down to town for the newspapers and figured it all out. It is comforting to know that if there is going to be a rampaging mob of enraged opera-goers, they are rampaging on our side. (Another side note: Don't mess with ladies in spike heels -- you could lose an eye.)

We have changed to buying our bread at a new bakery because the (Swiss) owner of our former bakery re-emerged after having been absent for nine months and went on a pro-Trump rant when she heard our accents. The new bakery is a bit out of our way, but seems very nice. And someone has spray-painted "Fascista Merde!" on the front of the garden supply store that is run by people who are, in fact, Fascist shits.

We are still having an unprecedented heat wave, but the air is not all that is getting hot around here.

 

The rain comes in waves these days. In between storms, the view is very clear and the sea is ink blue. During the storms, the mists roll in and it seems like we are alone on an island with cherry trees and new figs and lavender and no one else in the whole world. It is warm and yellow inside the house and outside the rain falls gently and the clouds gather around us and we can't even see the hills just behind the house.

The rain has washed away all the wisteria blossoms and the red poppies by the side of the Via Capriglia hang their heads down like beautiful ladies all left heartbroken.

At the pub, we have become part of the furniture and when the power went out in the rains last Friday, Jonathan called down and Alice told him how to turn it back on again.

Mimmo has been asking around about the fur near our front gate and the consensus now seems to be emerging that it is not wolves after all that have left it, but wild boar, who apparently like to scratch themselves against metal gates whenever they get the chance. This does not strike me as particularly comforting news. The wild boar are just as vicious as the wolves, but somehow I imagine the wolves to be swifter in dispatching their victims -- a small consolation, maybe, but a consolation nonetheless.

We went to the opera in Firenze Friday night -- Don Giovanni. The performances were amazing, of course -- one does not end up singing opera in Italy by being second rate. But for me, everything was haunted by echoes of other summers when Jonathan and I drove down to Santa Fe to the opera there -- a road trip across the Sangre de Cristos and then dropping down into Santa Fe for a night or two at Garrett's Desert Inn (which no longer exists) and a visit to our usual café, our usual bookstores, our usual restaurant. We have an umbrella here with us now that we bought one rainy afternoon at the Five and Dime on the plaza -- it got broken last week, but I will not throw it away.

And then the opera at the Santa Fe Opera House open to the night at the edge of town, where we would be cold together in the high desert air and dazzled and the sky was always clear sapphire blue. Once a man at the table next to us in our usual restaurant leaned over and asked us if we were married and for how long. "Why do you ask?" we said. "Because he looks happy," he said, pointing at Jonathan. But we were both happy then and, in my memory, the operas that we saw glow and sparkle and I remember sleeping very close to Jonathan on those nights to stay warm.