L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 4 NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS yarn I had made once, silently and patiently helped by my grandmother, when I was in 4 th or 5 th grade. That was Carnevale for us children: a moment to dream, to put on make up and colorful clothes, to go to dances and, of course, to dig into the delicious- ness of its typical food. As a Piedmontese, it would have been bugie - known as chiacchiere or frappe in other parts of Italy - and friscieu, those warm, soft and sweet dough balls, deep fried and rolled in sugar I still adore today: my favorite were those with raisins, but the apple ones were to die for, too. It was like a ritual, queueing in my village square, on the afternoon of Giovedì Grasso,dressed up as a Pierrot or a fairy queen or Little Red Riding Hood, to get a small bag of friscieu from the hands of whichever old lady from the parish in charge of distribution. They were the best of times. Then you become a teenager and Carnevale turns into an occasion to be daring with your make up, turn into your idol and even cross dress: one year, I went as Kurt Cobain and my boyfriend as Courtney Love. He was a fantastic Courtney, although I was the one with the rockstar attitude. When adulthood hits, though, you start looking at Carnevale with different eyes, and recog- nize how all that eagerness to change your appearance and being somebody else you had as a youngster sort of looses a bit of appeal when you grow up: maybe it's because you feel a bit more comfortable in your own skin, or maybe because there isn't, quite simply, time enough in our days of working adults to come out with ideas and put together decent costumes. So you start thinking of Carnevale a bit differently, you start wonder- ing about what it truly means and where it comes from. Historians all very much agree Carnevale is distinctively associated with the Catholic cal- endar, embraced as it is by Christmas time and Lent, but that its roots are much more ancient. You see, the month of February, when more often than not Carnevale takes place, used to be dedicated to spiritual cleansing and to purification. The Romans, and the Etruscans before them, also considered this time of the year a moment of passage between seasons and thus perfect to get in touch with the dead and the Otherworld. Never to be left without something to party about, our Latin ancestors also had the Lupercalia in the same period, a feast to honor fertility. However, it is while praising Saturn, the god of the Golden Age, that Rome really offered us a first glance into the world of Carnevale: the Saturnalia, the feast of Saturn, celebrated his reign of abundance by revelling in banquets, balls and a tempo- rary, joy-filled subversion of canonical, everyday rules: not far from modern day's Carnevale Carnevale and its thousand faces celebrations, when "ogni scherzo vale," every trick is allowed. In many a way, the Carnevale of Catholics, dependent as it is on the following time of peni- tence and purification of Lent, recalls the need to momentarily "let go" and refocus before the intense period of meditation and spiritual reflection to come. And so, Carnevale maintained its soul and essence, in spite of centuries passing, and religions in the peninsula changing. Today our Carnevale, the one that most reflects Italy's tradi- tions, colors and artistic heritage, is certainly that of le Maschere. Le Maschere, that set of regional figures, each of them associated with a specific outfit and a spe- cific set of moral and personal characteristics, are the real and most authentic face of an Italian Carnevale. Children of the beau- tiful baroque times of la Comme- dia dell'Arte, le Maschere are more than representations of people's stereotypical defects or of a region's own most quintes- sential inhabitants, they are the heart itself of the feast. In spite of time passing and trends changing, they remain popular, they remain central to every parade, unlikely to be carried out without even one of them partici- pating. The reason goes behind their sheer ties with the country's art and theatre, as important and beautiful as they may be: our Maschere mirror our defects, our strengths, our downfalls and, once a year, they allow us to look at them with a tad more of humor. Arlecchino, with his eter- nal necessity to trick and smart out everyone else, his charming and coquettish girlfriend Colom- bina, light hearted and easy on the eye, or Balanzone, the per- fect embodiment of some intel- lectual types who believe to be the only ones to have read more than a Reader Digest's version of Shakespeare, each one of them is, even if in an infinitesimal part, within us. When we see them, with their excesses and idiosyncrasies, we recognize a tiny crumb of our- selves in them and, alas, we smile at the connection, learning not to take ourselves too serious- ly all the time. And how immensely important is, in a world made of duties and unrighteous self-entitlement, to recognize with a touch of light- heartedness we are not perfect? That is it. That's why our beloved Maschere are still dear to our hearts in Italy, a couple of centuries after Teatro dell'Arte went out of fashion and became a little more than a period embodiment of the performing arts: it's because we see our- selves in them, defects and all, and we understand at once we need to be a bit less pompous, but a bit less harsh on ourselves, too. Continued from page 1 During the Carnival, hundreds of people wearing wonderful colourful costumes and masks come to Venice from all over the world Historians all very much agree Carnevale is distinctively associated with the Catholic calendar, embraced as it is by Christmas time and Lent, but that its roots are much more ancient

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