The City of Falling Angels

by John Berendt

  Work on the Fenice stopped.

  “The ruling is demented!” Mayor Cacciari declared. “The merits of this decision are way out of proportion to the damage done to the city and the country.”

  The construction site was a shambles; no one in authority knew what to do. Officials in Rome and Venice, operating in near-panic mode, pleaded with the outgoing Impregilo and the incoming Holzmann-Romagnoli to cooperate with each other so as to achieve a quick and smooth transition. But that seemed unlikely, as events quickly became snarled in a tangle of complicated questions and disputes.

  Would Impregilo be reimbursed for the $15 million it had spent already? Would Holzmann-Romagnoli honor the hundreds of contracts Impregilo had already signed with suppliers and craftsmen? Who would be responsible for the cranes, the leases for which were costing thousands of dollars a day, even with the site lying idle? Ditto for the scaffolding. And finally, could the partially built foundation designed by Gae Aulenti be adapted so that Aldo Rossi’s Fenice could sit on top of it? Or could Rossi’s design be altered to fit the foundation?

  The man who could have answered the last of these questions most easily was, tragically, unable to do so. Aldo Rossi had been killed in an automobile accident in September. He had run off a winding road while driving to his house at Lago Maggiore. His associates in Milan would carry on. Francesco da Mosto, who had initially alerted Holzmann-Romagnoli that grounds for an appeal existed, would serve as liaison between the Rossi studio, Holzmann-Romagnoli, and the Comune of Venice.

  Gae Aulenti’s reaction to the news of her unexpected expulsion from the Fenice project was to issue a terse comment: “To my successor, good luck.” It was, word for word, a proper thing to say, but in its brevity it carried the message that she was throwing up her hands in disgust.

  Tonci Foscari’s response was somewhat more graceful. He wrote a letter to the Gazzettino praising Aldo Rossi’s design. He complimented Rossi on his decision to place the rehearsal hall on the ground floor, where it could double as a small concert hall and enlarge the Fenice’s audience. Foscari volunteered a few suggestions to the Rossi studio, in line with increasing the profitable uses of the Fenice. He proposed, for example, adapting the Apollonian rooms so they could function independently for parties and after-theater dinners. This would require planning for extra bathrooms, a catering pantry, and emergency exits. Foscari offered his proposals “as a natural evolution of Aldo’s thinking, and—in the memory of that faraway smile that lighted his face—they seem to me almost an act of respect.”

  Gianni Agnelli said nothing at all about the court’s decision, and this was true to form. “L’Avvocato is the owner of Juventus, the Turin soccer team,” said Foscari. “Some weeks he wins, some weeks he loses. Complaining is not his style.”

  Meanwhile, upon close inspection, Rossi’s architectural plan was found to be in violation of certain Venetian building codes. In order for the construction to go forward, either the laws would have to be changed or exceptions granted. The relevant officials, however, promptly declared it would not be a problem.

  A more difficult issue was the privately owned building with the two apartments. The owners still refused to sell.

  “ALL IT WILL TAKE IS MONEY,” Ludovico De Luigi said with a shrug. “Keep watching. Many more hands are going to reach into this pie before it’s over.”

  De Luigi was sitting in front of his easel dabbing paint onto an image of the Church of Santa Maria della Salute as an oil platform suspended above a roiling sea confined within St. Mark’s Square. It was one of his familiar surrealist views of Venice. De Luigi’s studio occupied the ground floor of his house, and his windows looked out onto the small canal, the Rio di San Barnaba.

  “The Fenice is putting on an opera,” he said. “An opera buffa—a comic opera.” He paused, reconsidering his words. “No, a tragicomic opera. But this opera is not on the stage. It’s in the audience. The spectators have become the performers. Politicians, building executives, architects. Everybody says they want to build the theater. But nobody really wants to build it. They are only interested in the fees. They want this opera to go on and on. They come in, they get some money, they do nothing, then they leave, and on the way out, they get some more money. Then other people come in, and they get some money, and so forth. They all make impressive designs, but you have to know what’s beneath. Ruthless people. Politicians.”

  It was vintage De Luigi cynicism, but the real story was beginning to bear a resemblance to his vision of it and to the madness of his art.

  “That’s why I paint the Apocalypse,” he said, applying white-caps to the waves in the sea that filled St. Mark’s Square. “I am a svedutista, a painter of negative landscapes, interior landscapes. I paint them as they exist in the mind. They are not abstractions. They are composed of recognizable features arranged in a surreal vision. They are portraits of our nightmares.”

  De Luigi drew back and studied his darkly beautiful painting for a moment.

  “They had to find somebody to blame for the fire,” he went on, putting brush to canvas again. “But not the politicians, of course. First they accused the Mafia. It took two years for them to decide it was not the Mafia. And now they’ve found the two poor electricians.” De Luigi shrugged. “They tell the electricians, ‘Listen, if you go to jail instead of me, you will have a big fat bank account when you get out.’ Whoever burned down the Fenice did not do it for political or philosophical reasons. It was for money.”

  “If it had been out of anger at the Fenice,” I said, “I suppose the perpetrators would have made that known.”

  “The Fenice does have its faults,” said De Luigi, looking up from his canvas. “The whole focus of performances at the Fenice has changed, and for the worse. It’s shifted from the love of art to narcissistic protagonism. Exhibitionism. It started the first time they put a spotlight on the conductor. It was for Herbert von Karajan. He was the first movie-star conductor. Conductors used to be in the dark. But von Karajan insisted on a spotlight, or there wouldn’t be any music.”

  Ludovico De Luigi himself was no stranger to the spotlight. He bathed in one of his own devising. It illuminated his shoulder-length white hair, his imperial profile, and his outrageous antics. Tonight he glowed more than ever in his personal spotlight. He was wearing a tricornered hat edged in ermine, a ruffled shirt, red silk britches, and a dinner jacket on which he had painted lifelike red-and-orange flames. It was Carnival time again. Costumed revelers could be seen passing outside his window.

  “For Carnival this year,” he said, “I am dedicating myself to the second anniversary of the night the Fenice became an empty shell. It may remain an empty shell forever. Who knows?”

  We were joined shortly by Gianpietro Zucchetta, the bearded expert on bridges, canals, acqua alta, sewers, and fire. Zucchetta was accompanied by his wife, both in masks and eighteenth-century costumes, and a blond woman who was dressed as a courtesan. After a drink, we climbed into Zucchetta’s gondola, the replica of Casanova’s, which he had tethered to a pole in the canal in front of De Luigi’s house. De Luigi carried a small satchel on board and put it under the felze, out of sight.

  “That’s for later,” he said, with a look of bemused expectation. “We’re going to do a scherzo, a joke.”

  He turned to me. “Have you ever been arrested by the carabinieri?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure,” I said.

  “Then this could be your night!”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I’m going to break the law, and anyone with me might be considered an accomplice.”

  De Luigi seemed to enjoy keeping me in suspense, so I did not ask what his scherzo entailed.

  “Being arrested is good for the soul,” he said. “I was arrested for committing ‘obscene acts in public.’ It happened when I invited the porn star Cicciolina to inaugurate my horse sculpture in St. Mark’s Square, and she arrived topless. In a court of law I was declared an immoral person—a disr
eputable person!” De Luigi chuckled at the thought of it. “But for an artist, a reputation and a disreputation are the same. An artist wants to be recognized, to attract attention.

  “I became famous in Chicago,” he went on. “The police removed my paintings of nudes from a gallery on the grounds that I had painted ‘aggressive nipples.’ Of course, this made me very popular in Chicago.” De Luigi had another laugh, then looked up at me. “Does the thought of being arrested worry you?”

  “Not if it’s for a good cause.”

  “It’s for the Fenice.”

  “Well, then, fine,” I said.

  With Zucchetta rowing in front and a professional gondolier handling the stern oar, we made our way to the Grand Canal, where we turned right and headed toward St. Mark’s. De Luigi was laughing and joking, but I noticed he was looking up and down the canal, his eyes darting from boat to boat, looking to see who else was on the water, police boats in particular. We were passing the Peggy Guggenheim Museum.

  “After the war,” said De Luigi, “Peggy Guggenheim used to give big parties. The servants would come out when it was over and give us ice cream and cigarettes. Whenever she had a party, my friends and I would stand on the Accademia Bridge and watch her guests dancing on the terrace. One night, Peggy reenacted the sinking of the Titanic—her father had died on it. She walked from her terrace into the water, completely nude. She took the orchestra with her. She had paid them to do it. The gondoliers had to rescue her.

  “America is not pouring out those crazy people anymore. They were very amusing. They had a sense of theater. They were inventive, creative. Today Americans are not so amusing. Va bene. We will just have to amuse ourselves.”

  Directly ahead of us in the canal lay the walled platform where the Fenice stored its cement mixers and other equipment. We drew up alongside the mural of the Fenice that had been painted on the plywood enclosure. De Luigi came out from under the felze and stood up. He was holding a can of red paint and a paintbrush. He looked up and down the Grand Canal.

  “Does anybody see a police boat?”

  “Not yet,” said Zucchetta. He and the gondolier at the stern swirled their oars to steady the gondola and keep it close to the mural.

  De Luigi dipped his brush into the paint. Then, as he lifted his hand, he looked at me.

  “You know so much about the fire,” he said. “Where were the first flames seen?”

  “Front façade, upper left window,” I said.

  With broad strokes, De Luigi painted great tongues of brilliant red flames coming out of the window on the upper left. Then he painted them in the middle window, then the right.

  A water taxi coming up behind us made a wide turn and pulled up next to us so that its partygoing passengers could get a better look.

  “Bravo! Fantastico!” they called out. De Luigi turned and bowed. The wash from the taxi struck the gondola amidships and sent us rocking. Paint sloshed out of the can but fell into the water as De Luigi regained his balance. Then he turned and went back to work. He painted flames in the ground-floor windows and the main doorway, then he continued until all the portals on the front façade were filled with flames. They matched the flames painted on his dinner jacket. De Luigi’s flaming jacket and the mural with its flaming windows had become an ensemble work of art. He was the torch setting the painted Fenice on fire.

  Two more boats pulled up, then another and another. The gondola bobbed and pitched amid sounds of laughter, applause, idling motors, and sloshing water. De Luigi kept on painting. He was now standing in front of a cutaway view of the foyer and the Apollonian rooms, painting wherever his brush would reach. As he was painting flames on the ceremonial stairway, the mural was suddenly illuminated by a pulsing blue light. A police boat nosed through the flotilla around us. De Luigi, very much aware of its arrival, went on painting.

  “What are you doing?” one of the policemen shouted.

  De Luigi turned around, the incriminating paintbrush in one hand, the paint can in the other. “I am telling the truth,” he said with triumphant defiance. “The architect’s commission for the new Fenice came out of the flames. I am turning his rendering into an honest statement.”

  “Oh, it’s you, maestro,” the policeman said.

  “Well, are you going to arrest me?” De Luigi asked.

  “Arrest you? Again?”

  “I have vandalized this mural,” said De Luigi.

  “I’m not sure I’d call it that.”

  “Am I not a public nuisance?” De Luigi looked bewildered.

  “During Carnival, maestro, everyone is a public nuisance. The rules are different. Come back and do this again next week. Then maybe we’ll arrest you.”

  {12}

  BEWARE OF FALLING ANGELS

  FROM THE TOP OF A SMALL BRIDGE, Lesa Marcello watched as workmen removed the last of the scaffolding from the five-hundred-year-old Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. The building had been wrapped in a cocoon of canvas for the past ten years while the restorers did their work, and now it stood revealed: a multicolored, early-Renaissance jewel box sheathed in panels of inlaid marble and porphyry.

  Like a gem itself, the Miracoli Church was set into a tiny niche at the heart of a maze of streets so intertwined and out of the way that one often came upon it by surprise. A small canal ran along one side, serving as a reflecting pool. The Miracoli was, in short, irresistible. Even John Ruskin, who detested Renaissance architecture, had to admit that it was one of the most “refined” buildings in Venice. Small wonder that Santa Maria dei Miracoli—“St. Mary of the Miracles”—had been the church of choice for weddings as long as anyone could remember.

  The restoration was financed by Save Venice, the American charity devoted to the preservation of art and architecture in Venice. As the director of the local office, Countess Marcello had been coming to the church several times a week for some years to check on its progress. She conferred with artisans, workmen, contractors, and city officials. At times she even climbed the scaffolding to get a closer look.

  As with all such projects in Venice, the restoration of the Miracoli had not been a simple matter of putting up the money and telling the restorers to go to work. Venetian bureaucrats never shared the donors’ sense of urgency. They could delay a project indefinitely if they felt the slightest challenge to their authority or their expertise. Understanding this, the officers of Save Venice had wisely hired Countess Marcello to run their Venice office. They had also elected several Venetian nobles to their board of directors, including Lesa Marcello’s husband, Count Girolamo Marcello.

  Countess Marcello was a woman of quiet, unassuming grace and had proved exceptionally valuable to Save Venice. She knew the local superintendents personally; more than that, she knew about the rivalries within the bureaucracy and was therefore able to maneuver deftly, without treading on toes. She was practiced in the art of negotiation, Venetian style, which began with the understanding that one could accomplish more over a cup of coffee at Caffè Florian than across a desk in an office. In conversation Lesa Marcello raised issues obliquely. She compromised, and if there happened to be any impatience percolating among the officers of Save Venice, and there usually was, she never let the Venetians know about it.

  “One always has to do these things privately,” she said when I came to see her in her office one afternoon, “not in an official way. For example, if Save Venice pays to restore a painting, one of the art experts on its board of directors might want to come to Venice and say to the superintendent, ‘You know, you shouldn’t use this chemical.’ The superintendent will think he’s being criticized, so he replies, ‘But that’s what we want to do.’ And then the project is stalled. I prefer to broach the subject by saying, ‘I’ve been asked if this or that might be possible.’ And then I would simply compare the two ideas rather than oppose one against the other. It’s a very subtle difference, but it’s important. It’s our nature, our way of moving, of navigating. It’s gentle, not aggressive. The superint
endents are willing to discuss new ideas with other experts, but only if it’s done in an evenhanded way. And, of course, only in private.”