Newly Refurbished Bedroom

Festival Paganiniano

Festival Paganiniano di Carro will start on July 14th until August 13th

Join us for the cocktail at the Basile's house on the 14th at 18,30 . 

BBC Composer of the Week - Paganini

Composer of the Week is a music series on BBC Radio 3 exploring the life and works of a succession of composers.

Niccolo Paganini is currently the featured artist and, as I write, there are three programmes left until Friday 6 July 2012 discussing his musical life and influence.

Episode 4 tomorrow asks if Paganini was an unrivalled genius or grotesque showman?

Donald Macleod and violinist Andrew McGee also explore Paganini's reputation as the virtuoso's virtuoso and we hear how today's players rise to the challenge of performing the works tailored so brilliantly to the unique abilities of their creator.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kl268

When Napoleon Came to Carro

Carro, Friday August 19° 1814. Just a few minutes to midnight. The Emperor is distracted only for a moment by the quick neighs of six horses lead by five of his personal soldiers. They ride on a resonant and harsh cobbled paving, down to the highly narrow road below, towards who knows which stable in the glare of lighting torches.

The Emperor ponderously proceeded till here to see once again her beloved sister Elisa, maybe for the last time, self-confident but conscious that an unknown destiny was waiting for him. He was furious with her beloved sister who had come to this isolated village in the Apennines of Liguria to meet her lover Nicolò Paganini, leaving alone her unaware husband and two children,8 years old Napoleona and the baby Federico. She had left them who knows for how many days and with which excuses in the Royal Manor of Marlia in Capannori, close to Lucca, where they went to spend the summer. At the same time, the Emperor was proud of winning the deep affection that tied him to her. He continued to admire Elisa’s excellent political and administrative capacities which were much higher compared to her husband’s ones, Pasquale Felice Baciocchi married in 1797.

This was the reason why in 1805 he bestowed her with the title of princess of Lucca and Piombino, giving her “the general government of the departments in Tuscany with the title of grand duchess” as was stated in the imperial decree on March 3rd 1808. Now the Emperor was almost happy because reaching her secretly in Carro had been easier than in Capannori and he could avoid any dangerous control or meeting. Close to the window sill, leaning on the comfortable green velvet back of the walnut dormeuse, in the living room of the residence (now called "La Paganina") that belonged to that damned Nicolò, the Emperor was sighing and waiting for Elisa. Thanks to his greatly efficient informers he had known where she was.

He had arrived ten minute ago. He had brought a gift for her, a flag designed by himself. It was white with a red strip and it was inspired by the grand duke mercantile flag with the addition of three gold bees - of his fictitious kingdom in Elba. Under the closed circle of the oil lamp, he looked away from the very near house which was just opposite. In this house, once belonged to his parents, lived one of his aunts who he saw looking from the opposite window. He was told by the young waiting gentlewoman who welcomed him and preceded him in the first floor till the living room. He felt to hate both those women who certainly were accomplices of Elisa’s affair. He was still sighing, his white pants and his boots were tight. Compared to his light blue linen jacket, he was hot. Being underway since August 16th, leaving at 11.15 pm and having rest briefly just two times, he was feeling the weight of a great tiredness. Along the Aurelia road and then up on the impervious paths from Ponte Santa Margherita to Carro when the night was bright and starry, under the moon scythe, he had ridden for almost seven hours together with his escort that came before him three days earlier in order to verify that difficult travel.

The escort was waiting for him at the Gulf of La Spezia, in the small bay under Le Grazie which he reached by dinghy after going secretly on board in Elba and sailing on the Abeille, his most agile felucca Yes, nobody would have discovered that he was not there, after telling everybody he wanted to stay alone, without being disturbed, in order to rest in his summer residence at the top of the green valley of San Marting, above Portoferraio, which has just been renovated. Now the Emperor was smiling, while the waiting gentlewoman was pouring out fresh water into a shining crystal glass. He was thinking that nobody could have a suspect about this escape – at the end of a great celebration for his 45th birthday which continued the day after in Portoferraio with a horse competition, a public ball and fireworks.

Yes, nobody could have a suspect about it, especially because the colonel Campbell, the English superintendent in charge of keeping him under surveillance, was going to go back to Elba within five days. However, he also thought that he should have pretended to behave as if he had to stay on the island for years because, having Metternich and the English ready to confine him somewhere else, he was meditating his return to France where he would have received help from the his faithful army. What if things would turn badly? Elisa would have been forced to exile from the staggering grand duchy of Tuscany which would return to the Habsburg... With a shrug he roused himself and started smiling again. Luck would not have leave him.

Didn’t he repeat himself since childhood this sentence: "Who does not know where he is going, he goes further"? “Bonne nuit, quand-mème c'est presque déjà demain, mon Empereur ... ” At the polite but high pitch voice, not distant tolls were overlapping. Napoleon turned over. Wearing a red satin dressing gown, slim and tall, the 32 years old Nicolò Paganini raised his long left forefinger. At the twelfth toll he clarified: “C'est l'église, mon Empereur, la paroisse de Saint Lorenzo au bout du village, la cloche y sonne, deux fois, à chaque heure …” Then he bowed down smiling with a mocking, almost sarcastic smile. He was going to continue but, while he was standing up, Napoleon anticipated him sharply pointing at the waiting gentlewoman just beyond the door: “ Nous voudrions bien rencontrer notre soeur, la princesse Elisa... La femme de chambre à dit qu'elle est içi, n'est-ce-pas? Nous sommes sûres de sa prèsence”.

 The Emperor knew very well that in 1805 Elisa heard him playing during a concert in the Lucca cathedral. She was so astonished to invite him to court as violinist and music director till 1809. He also knew that Paganini composed the Napoléon sonata between 1805 and 1808, but he did not intend give him his confidence. How he dared sleeping with a Bonaparte, having at the same time an involvement with Angiolina Cavanna, whom he escaped with to Parma few months before? While twelve tolls resonated from the church, Napoleon loudly ordered the waiting gentlewoman in Italian: - Do you want to call my sister or not? - But I am here, my dear brother, let me hug you... it is a Madame Laplace dress, do you like it? Perfectly combed, dressed with a light damask yellow silk dress, tall and slightly bony, Elisa burst into the room, turned around ready to bow down, but he embraced her. The waiting gentlewoman bowed out and closed the door.

 What Elisa, Napoleon and Paganini spoke about, we will never know. About this meeting, which would not have been known otherwise, I only observe what the waiting gentlewoman could personally notice. She wrote the episode in an illiterate letter to her fiancé Andrea Pellegra from Sestri Levante. Luckily this letter arrived to us, with the clarification that the Emperor left before sunrise. The waiting gentlewoman’s name was Maria Paganini (a surname still in use nowadays in Carro).Her coming near to those three protagonists was only a minimal break, a detail, compared to the more official and dramatic plot of their history. But History, as Tilgher teaches, often nests in details.

by Marcello Staglieno