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The Town of Two Worlds

By Vivien Devlin

The Festival goers are gathering at the Tric Trac café  prior to the start of Puccini`s Il Trittico:  the men, immaculately dressed in off-white Armani suits, their eyes lurking behind dark shades, continually answer the piercing ring of their mobile phones, "Prego! Prego!," while the glamorous women glide over the cobblestones in their pink Prada shoes, matching handbags, with gold dripping from ears, necks, wrists and ankles. They have travelled from Assisi and Perugia, from Rome and Milan for the Spoleto Festival – Festival dei Due Mondi, the Festival of Two Worlds.

Founded by composer Gian Carlo Menotti in 1958, this is the Glyndebourne of Italy, the social occasion to be seen - “Ciao, bella.”

On the other side of  Piazza Duomo, an intimate group of elderly women have gathered for a gossip, faces furrowed, eyes blinking in the bright rays of the evening sunshine. Their hands are gnarled with arthritis, their bunioned feet red and swollen in their plastic sandals. They are wrapped almost entirely in black, with shawls and thick stockings, regardless, or perhaps because of, the heat. They stare uncomprehendingly at these sophisticated outsiders and mumble and grumble to each other.

In the Umbrian medieval hill town of Spoleto, a strange metamorphosis is taking place as the citizens reluctantly accept the arrival of an international army of young American and European musicians, singers and dancers for the annual summer arts festival. For two weeks in early July the town virtually divides into two contrasting worlds juxtaposed, one defying the other. And it’s in the evening when the two factions clash head on.

It is just past 7pm and the start of the Passeggiata, the daily ritual involving it seems the entire community - families, mothers pushing sleeping bambinos, grandmothers, smiling couples, hand in hand - promenade through the streets. The traditional stroll has several aims: a pre-prandial walk, shopping or the opportunity for social encounter. In La Dolce Vita fashion, the teenage girls flaunt their tight skirted legs, while the boys sit nonchalantly on their parked mopeds while eyeing up the local talent  and strangers in town. Later, after the opera, the crowds mix and mingle in the piazza to celebrate the carnival atmosphere.

I have rented a tiny villa in the nearby hamlet of Campello Alto, perched on a hill beneath a 1,000 year old monastery.  It`s a bit ramshackle with attic bedroom and unreliable electricity but I’m keen to experience life in the heart of the community.

Surrounded by fields of sunflowers and vineyards, I’m woken at dawn by crowing cockerels and the clangour of goat bells. In the garden, hidden under a sprawling rosemary bush, lives a tortoise. In mid afternoon he ventures out, crawling over the straw-like grass to the apple tree to find windfall fruit, his eyelids still heavy after his siesta. No one remembers how long he has been here – some say over 30 or 40 years.

Next door live a young couple, Maria and Guilio, who invite me in for a glass of home brewed vino rosso. My Italian is as limited as their English, but I’m keen to hear their views of the Festival. Guilio shrugs his shoulders and almost spits out the words, his hands gesticulating in all directions. Too expensive, I gather, for Maria is a nurse, he works nightshift in a supermarket; they have never been to a single performance.

Yet the underlying truth is the Festival (a truly magical event for international music lovers) has saved Spoleto, bringing undeniable financial gain in terms of tourism and economic vitality to the town. During the post-war years of the 1940’s and 50’s, Spoleto suffered serious deprivation and social hardship. Employment relied on agriculture - vineyards (nearby are famous wine towns – Orvieto, Montepulciano), olive groves and cornfields in the valley below.

The rural community here is still based on the old serf tradition, where the Contadini, the peasants, work for landowning farmers or scrape a self-sufficient living tending their allotments. These families are notoriously independent and proud of their traditional culture. Hundreds of years ago they defied the salt tax as a sign of solidarity with the past and to this day bread is baked without salt and little is used in cooking.

For centuries Spoleto was defended by Il Rocca, the medieval fortress, and protected from intruders by the high, stone city wall. Clambering up the steep, zigzagging cobbled streets to Il Duomo, the 12th century cathedral, bleached ivory by the sun, you realise this is all very much the same as witnessed by the English poet Shelley who described the town as “ the most romantic city I ever saw”.

Today the Romans with their Versace sunshades may visit Spoleto but will never conquer and destroy the old way of life. This is as ancient as the Duomo, as traditional as the evening passeggiata and as timeless as the tortoise in my Italian garden.

Visitor Information www.spoletofestival.it

The 50th Spoleto Festival will take place in June/July 2007.

If you have been to the Spoleto Festival, Charleston, South Carolina, (founded by Gian Carlo Menotti in 1977), you may wish to visit the first and original Spoleto festival in Italy.

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