Tag: Tuscany Charming

Tuscany – The Orchestra Giovanile Italiana

Orchestra Giovanile Italiana
Orchestra Giovanile Italiana

The Orchestra Giovanile Italiana (founded by Riccardo Muti in 1984 and direct by Nicola Paszkowski) performed last month at Florence’s Teatro Comunale as part of the Maggio Musicale Festival, with guest conductor Gianandrea Noseda.
The musicians (all between 18 and 27) received hearty bis! and bravi! For their performances of Smetana’s Hakon Jarl,, Stravinsky’s Le Baiser de la Fée and Dvorak’s Symphony N. 8 in G major op. 88
The Orchestra Giovanile consists mainly of Italian performers, although there are eight foreigners ( from Poland, Ecuador, Japan, Romania, Macedonia, Mexico and Russia).
The musicians know that in Italy they must accept ludicrously low pay, but even so they aspire to this joyously, expecting to supplement their earnings with teaching and solo performances, but above all to pursue a career they love.
Three of the musicians ( all 25 years old) discussed their ambitions over coffee before the concert.
Percussionist Dario Varuni, a Florentine of Neapolitan extraction, although attracted to the progressive cosmopolitan capital Berlin, said he could imagine no better life than performing in his adepte city. Already he has a busy career that includes teaching and performing in the past as far away as Paris, Heidelberg, and Milan.
Cellist Anna Stasevich, on the other hand, who comes from Caluga (200 km from Moscow), said she would be thrilled toh ave a permanent position with any major Italian orchestra.
Stasevich studied at the Conservatory of  Caluga and completed her studies at the Moscow State Music Academy with Alla Vassilieva. What she likes about being in the OGI is being able to devote all her time to practing and performing Harpist Anna-Livia Walker (from Lucca), who has recently played for Live Music Now in the UK and at the Lisbon Opera House, says she would be very happy to continue working both in orchestras and as a soloist.
Sureley the world needs more of  this kind of music, but sadly Noseda, conductor of Torino’s Teatro Regio, told the audience that the Giovanile (OGI), widely recognized as one of Europe’s most distinguished youth orchestras, has had its funds cut in half this year. Noseda, who rehearsed with the musicians in the period leading up to the concert without accepting any payment, said that “ our future dreams” represented by these young artists, are under threat.

Tuscany and women

tuscany-and-women

Women who follow their instict, and strive to fulfil their dreams, who find space and time and come to Tuscany.
Tuscany Welcomes Women is designed to meet the destre of these free, indipendent and romantic women who love travelling and meeting other people, pampering themselves and living themselves a holiday, a moment of pleasure in search of emotion and knowledge.
Tuscany Welcomes Women welcomes you to a region that has come up with this possibility, making made to measure offers for women travelling alone, with children or female fiends.
The women who come here will find the care and attention of selected structures with different programmes and proposing different ideas, with special offers and discounts for beauty treatments, spa treatments and cultural events.
Think of the holiday that awaits you, of what you will experience, get an advance taste of your Tuscan experience by plucking from your imagination a name, a location, a trip, that inspires you and that has drawn your attention. Then forget all the rest.
You can count on the female entrepreneurs who care part of Tuscany Welcomes Women to organise a holiday rich in emotions.
We knew that with their help we would be alble to offer a lot: a rich and open region, welcoming and generous with women who want to communicate and rediscover the things that count.
Besides, with their sensitivity what better approach could there be to the region’s treasures than a woman’s.
You will be able to come in contact with different worlds, from the splendour of the Medici cities to the infinite number of small villages, ridde and enveloped in the charm of a never ending story.
A closely woven fabric, dense in emotions in which art leale room for the countryside and the flavours of the countryside, and the flavours of the cuisine are the cue for getting to know the territory, cultures and traditions.
In the Tuscany Welcomes Women project the rules are changed, another language reigns, the language of relaxation, rest, but also of discovery research, pleasure, all designed to fit in with your desires.

The project is arranged into several themes:
. knoledge and learning
. active holidays
. society life
. well being spiritualità and meditation
. ecology and country life

These themes are basic  concepts that can be furtherexplored tank to numerous possible activities designed especially for women.
Let yourselves be guided and you will discover a unique Tuscany where harony and equilibrium reign, the colours conjure up desires and views trigger off sweet sensations.
Against this background you can experience your holiday increasingly in the driving seat, and lessa s onlookers.
Women travelling with children can find ad hoc structures and staff, with ideas designed for children. “pearshaps also in the company of female friends” you can celebrate an event, create a personalized stay, devote your time to shopping and society life, to cultural life and your healt with walking, cycling and horse riding.
The tourist packages of various kinds, from days devoted to relaxation in a spa to visiting a wine cellar with wine tasting, from a course in local cuisine to a walk in the woods or in the regional parks, a dinner in a typical restaurant to taste the flavour  of tradition and play at the theatre or in a town square following the “events calendar” for the period and the city you are visiting.
In addition, there are holidays designed for those who want to learn something new: including activities starting in the morning, at a leisurely time, for you to relax and forget the frenetich rhythms of every day routine, until the evening, when you late in the many night spots that offer entertainment of all types together with typical dishes.
Tuscany Welcomes Women provides a welcoming stay in a hotels, period residences, solida farms and bed & breakfast that are taking part in the iniziative. If you want to taste dishes from the traditional cuisine you can have lunch or dinner in the restaurants participating to the project Vetrina Toscana a Tavola.

Tuscany – Apuan Alps

apuan-alps-monte-pisanino

A DAY OUT ON 13 JUNE

Let me guide you on a journey to the marble quarries in the Apuan Alps, a range of mountains blessed by a limitless topping of this wonderful stone. I’ve been living in Lucca for more than twenty years, but it was only recently that I went to visit the Fantiscritti quarry which experts regard as one of the best in the world for the pure whiteness of its marble.

One hour by car from Lucca and voilà, you are, to paraphrase the Beatles, “in the sky with marble”.
Take the motorway for Genova, exit at Carrara, go through the village of Moseglia, follow the signs for Fantiscritti and in another twenty minutes you’ll reach your destination.

Once there, the first thing you see is the open-air museum with its display of the old tools and ropes used until a few decades ago. They bear witness to the eternal challenge of mankind against nature and you immediately understand the extent of the exhausting and dangerous work. Many of the marmisti in Carrara can still hear the cries of desperation when a block could not be kept on the tracks and casualties were a frequent occurrence. When we marvel at the marble masterpieces in our museums, we don’t often think of the victims who allowed such sculptures to be made.

Those were the times when marble was wrested almost manually out of the mountains by an army of workers, like ants disputing food. In this hell of human beings and their masterpieces, the mountains were finally taken into consideration and technology was allowed to be the winner.
So now there are two quarries at Fantiscritti eating the mountain – one inside using modern excavation techniques and a traditional one on top in the open air. In the internal one, a block that used to take weeks of work to extract is now quarried in an hour by just a few workers.

A guide takes you inside aboard a small bus and describes the cutting techniques and how blocks are transported. You are struck by how enormous the internal quarry is and by the big marble pillars and arches that have been left in place to stop the mountain caving in. In this way, they have involuntarily built a marble cathedral inside the mountain.

When you leave Fantiscritti, turn left and go to Colonnata, the tiny village where the local delicacy lardo is made with processes in use since the Roman period. It is kept in marble containers and seasoned with herbs and is highly regarded all over Italy. Lardo was important in the diet of the people who transported the marble down the mountain to its destination. By the time you’ve looked around and sampled the specialities of the area, the afternoon is gone.

So, on your way back, you stop in Camaiore, a nice old village five miles inland from Viareggio.
You have dinner in one of the many pleasant restaurants and trattorias while waiting for the evening because on June 13 the traditional sawdust carpet event takes place here once again. During the night, the tappetari, the carpet makers, cover the main streets with colored sawdust carpets on which the Corpus Domini procession will take place the following morning at 10 a.m. Between sunset and dawn, a time of 10 to 12 hours, they make carpets which are two metres wide and 40 metres long.

In fact, the tappetari start working on them a few months earlier because first they have to decide on the subjects (usually religious) to be represented, prepare plywood to transfer the drawings on to the ground, and make templates. I will save most of the detail about how the work is done because it’s more fun when you see for yourself how these masterpieces – which will last only a few hours – are created. It’s a really enjoyable event that only bad weather can spoil.

Tuscany – Forte dei Marmi

View on Forte dei Marmi beach
View on Forte dei Marmi beach

Forte dei Marmi is a sea town and comune in the province of Lucca, in northern Tuscany (Italy).
It is the birthplace of Paola Ruffo di Calabria, Queen of the Belgians.
The census of 2001 states that Forte dei Marmi has 8,444 inhabitants, though population nearly triples during the summer, because of the hundreds of tourist who mainly come from Florence, Milan, Germany, and Russia.
Tourism is the principal activity of Forte dei Marmi’s citizens.
In Italian Forte dei Marmi means Fort of the Marbles. In fact, the town takes its name from the fortress that rises in the middle of the main square, built under Grand Duke Peter Leopold, who was to become Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1788.
The fortress was built to defend the coast from outer attacks, but in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century it became the place where the marble quarried from the Alpi Apuane (they are the same mountains of the famous marble of Carrara) was stocked before being sent to the pier for shipping.