MUSIC IN MILAN
DAY 2
We started our first full day in Milan with a walking tour of the central city led by Andrea.
This is Andrea, our trusty and knowledgeable guide.
You'll see many umbrellas in this series of photos;
the weather was a bit inclement and cool for a few days, but we did have a couple days of splendid weather, especially Friday and Saturday. On our departure day, it snowed.
Andrea showed us a shortcut to the Duomo, our starting off point for the tour. The cathedral took over 600 years to build and you'll understand why in subsequent photos. It is very intricate, has tons and tons of carved marble, and must have been a structural engineer's nightmare to build. However, labor was basically free.
But before I get to the Duomo, some photos of our distinguished group:
Most of them take lovely side pictures, eh?
OK, now here's exterior of the Duomo. My inside shots were bad, for the most part. Flashes weren't allowed, so the photos were very dark and unpublishable.
The Duomo is doing some blatant advertising
to pay for some of the costs of its multi-million
euro maintenance costs.
Detail on the front facade.
This is part of the floor near the entrance. All along the brass line are mosaics representing the zodiac, upon which a ray of light streaming through a small hole in the wall of the cathedral settles at different times of the year. The sign nearest the hole is lit during the summer solstice; the sign farthest from the hole and therefore the most oblique is lit during the winter solstice. It reminds me of the Incan clocks at Machu Pichu.
And then directly on the Piazza del Duomo is the Galleria Emanuel Vittorio, Europe's first enclosed shopping mall. It is grand.
And our group at the Gallery ... near the bull ...
After a quick lunch, we took vans to go to Santa Maria delle Grazie, where DaVinci's The Last Supper is painted. Our guide seemed to think that we only had reservations for 2, not 20. I felt as if I lost my cool - at least I asserted myself - and we did all get in. Photos are not allowed here because the fresco is very fragile. I had read that visitors have to go through a dehumidification chamber before entering the room, but I didn't feel too raisin-y after being detained in the chamber. I think it's more a crowd-control mechanism. No more than 30 persons are supposedly allowed in for 15 minute sessions. Our guide spoke for a long time about the painting and DaVinci after we entered; we were allowed less than 3 minutes to see it up close, which here means at least from a distance of 10 feet. The fresco is large and is so much more impressive than images in books. The expressions and actions of the disciples really relates to their personalities as gleaned from the New Testament. Anyway, after three minutes the guard yelled for us to leave. We had no time to see the fresco opposite of the crucifixion painted by a local guy many centuries ago. We were shuffled through to the gift shop.
Seeing The Last Supper should have been a real highlight, but the handling of visitors is reminiscent of cattle herding. T'wasn't too pleasant.
I do have some photos of the church, Santa Maria delle Grazie:
Milan is a great walking city. It is geographically large, but somehow it can be broken down into decent sizes and non-intimidating pieces to walk about. In the older city center, the buildings only have 3 or 4 floors, so it reminded me of Boston when I first arrived there in the 60's. Although it is in Italy's most prosperous area and is "the" business city of the country, its bustle doesn't seem as hectic as New York's, which I was told it resembled. After all, it is in Italy, where folks know la dolce vita.
Fashion and design are omnipresent, not only in the Golden Rectangle where all the big fashion names are, but in small galleries and boutiques on side streets house avant-garde and experimental designers, as well as keepers of the older guard. For me, it was fun to look. In our group, I think the Chicago Four took quite full advantage of that aspect of Milan: clothes, hair salon visits - very nice results - and the general joy of purchasing something and then looking great.
We had a pretty quick and early dinner (for Italy) at Agnello, just around the corner from the Hotel. It was wonderful, quite simple - only 3 courses! And the risotto was with Barolo wine and pecorino cheese.
Enough about that. Tuesday night we went to La Scala for the first time. It seemed to be sort of an oxymoron, because we saw Wagner's Der Fliegende Hollaender. The choreography and set design were very unexpected: the sea was transformed into the office of a shipbroker; storms at sea were represented by the cast waving about along with the zinging of the violin strings. The general consensus of our group is that we would have rather seen a different opera - maybe Verdi or Mozart, but being in La Scala was a dream come true for many of us. The red curtain. The golden box seats. The comfortable, plush red seats. The beautiful white ceiling. The chandelier. The foyer. The acoustics. The wonderful attire of the guests. The orchestra. The voices. The little translation screens. It was all perfect. And I cried tears of joy at the end - just to be in a such a beautiful moment (or 3 hours).
I think some of the others have photos of the house, which I'll post when I get them.
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