Articles by Gina

After being home in NYC for just over a month, I’m back across the pond again, this time in Italy, for the Colombari/Monteverdi project, which began last summer and is finally coming to fruition. We arrived the weekend of Corpus Domini, a major milestone in the Orvieto calendar, with huge processions through the streets – similar to Semana Santa in Mao, but bigger and with more variety of costumes, thankfully – fewer drums but also bagpipes and many, many flags… lovely…

We are ensconced in Palazzo Simoncelli, a fabulous old pile where we both live and work (assorted convents have also been pressed into service for accommodations, since we are quite numerous) – the courtyard of the palazzo is where the performances will take place next weekend. We are attempting to pull a giant rabbit out of a very small hat… it is so beautiful here, when the usual theater hell threatens to overwhelm, one only has to look around to realise one’s good fortune… and it is, after all, a very merry band of magicians (American, Italian, and English) with a beautiful rabbit and elegant hat… my lack of spoken italian is frustrating, but the musicians are very willing and we muddle along with a mixture of french, spanish, italian and english. Every day brings new challenges and rewards – yesterday it appeared that there was not enough electricity in the old place to light the show, but last night, at the end of a long week, we were rewarded with deserts to die for at a local restaurant, washed down by their own limoncello – and today a bunch of equipment showed up (on a sunday, no less) and Peter and Nerina are busy figuring out how to make it work… the costumes are gorgeous, it would be nice to see them!

Before leaving the States, I managed a long weekend up in Maine, the first in many years – Biddeford Pool, to be exact, the summer home of family friends from way back when – I hadn’t been there since I was 7 – my childhood memories were of mud flats, lobster dinners, and learning the facts of life by eavesdropping on my sister and the eldest boy of the family, sitting in the dark under the house with the bright seaside world glimpsed through the slats of the siding around the raised foundations (the house sits right by the ocean). Zin was madly fixing and painting the place in preparation for the summer renters but refused to let me help, insisting that I serenade her instead – which I gladly did, sitting on the lawn with a spectacular ocean view, getting to know the mandola… the only time I left during the 5 days was to take a kayak across to various of the outlying islands one afternoon… what bliss, to wake up to the sight and sound of the ocean…

Done. We gave Liz a good send off – at the crematorium, at the church and at the village hall – her house is empty, and mum is finally laid to rest with her parents and her brother in the family plot in chicago – enough of being a Leishman! However, mum is carved on the back of dad’s memorial down by the river Tees, so they are together there – it all feels right… but what a huge hole Liz has left – I hadn’t realised how much she was the anchor of the family – everyone else came and went, but she has ALWAYS been there, all my life – I’ve never known the place without her…
but sic transit… it’s our turn next…

meanwhile, it’s time to turn my full attention to monteverdi and the mandola, and enjoy these days back in new york, before the next chapter… signing off for now…