Venice, Summer 2021 ~ Read
It started, as always, with a book read ahead of travel. It ended with a fascinating experience, involving a real Cinderella’s glass slipper and a glimpse into the life of one of Venice’s and the world’s most celebrated glass artists of the 20th century.
John Berendt’s City of Falling Angels is a non-fiction account of the author’s investigation of the infamous 1996 fire of La Fenice, Venice’s storied opera house. Berendt happened to be on the ground, or, rather, on the water, in Venice in the immediate aftermath of the fire, and his book is an amazing portrait of the city, its politics, inhabitants, benefactors and detractors. The book reads like a captivating crime novel, which it partly is, except based completely on real events, with colorful accounts of poets, present and past; aristocrats, noble and waning; and glass artists, inspired and scheming. The fire is both the backdrop for human drama, and the muse for artistic creation.
One of the stories Berendt examines quite closely is the history of the Seguso family of glassmakers, who for generations created legendary pieces of Murano glass. Archimede Seguso, the aging patriarch, witnesses the Fenice fire as one of its closest neighbors, and in the aftermath, creates a series of vases that document the fire’s progression and impact on greater Venice. The book describes an amazing technique by Archimede that captures in glass the fire flickering in the dark night, the smoke, and the morning after.
When we visited Murano Island, I spotted Seguso’s showroom name as soon as we disembarked from the vaporetto. We went with the crowd in the opposite direction for some shopping and lunch, but then I insisted on the detour, “if nothing then just to snap a pic of the building for my blog”…
We were greeted by a friendly young curator of the Seguso Foundation, who spoke excellent English, and was quite surprised to hear that I had an interest in seeing La Fenice collection thanks to reading The City of Falling Angels. She was the only one in the showroom, and with the Foundation’s treasures in another space, she was only able to bring out just one of the vases for me to see. The vase was blue…
Puzzled, I asked why a vase created to resemble a fire would be that color. She realized that I was really devoted to this book business, and after making a quick phone call, invited us for a private tour of Archimede Seguso’s collection, including the entire line of vases commemorating the tragic accident. Now we could see all the stages of the opera house burn, including “smoke”, “blaze”, “water” and “reflection of dying embers in the mud of a drained canal”. While abstract, the vases truly told the story so vividly described by Berendt in the opening of his book.
It was amazing to have this opportunity to see “something you read about in the books” right there in front of us, during a spontaneous private tour. We learned so much more about Seguso’s work, including his collaboration with Tiffany’s and several Italian high fashion brands, as well as his custom creations for the Pope, Sir Elton John and Disney. Yes, Cinderella’s glass slipper for the 1998 Disney film was made by Master Seguso himself, and there it was for us to see!
Anyway, read the book! Venetian palazzos, canals, bridges and churches come alive in Berendt’s masterful writing, and most importantly, you meet real people, whether Venetian by birth or choice, who love and care for this incredible city.
Don’t rush to Amazon.com, this book can be just as easily found at your local library or many independent bookstores, such as Browsers Books in Olympia, or the Pacific Northwest’s most famous independent book shop, Powell’s Books in Portland, OR.
