We drove to Spoleto on the A1 North highway direction Florence on Saturday. It's a 90 minute drive the last 25 minutes is in the mountains as you climb up on a two lane road full of curves. A pleasant drive, traffic was light.
Spoleto has a festival in late June and early July founded some 52 yrs ago by GianCarlo Menotti, it's an international music festival with great and not so well known names featured. It was linked as a Festival for many years to the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, N.C. but this has gone by the wayside following a dispute years ago.
Spoleto is a beautiful ancient small town, per example there is a gate on one of the small hillside street where 2500 yrs ago Hannibal and his elephants were stopped by the Roman Army and defeated. The City today is a medieval town with a huge castle newly restored to its former glory above the town, a great Cathedral and many ancient churches, convent and cloisters.
Spoleto is also truffle country, local dishes have truffles in everything, simply beautiful and so good, excellent white wines by the Cantina Baldessari company and good cheeses also with truffles.
We parked just outside the old walls and simply walked around, it is so small that the whole city can be seen in one day, though 2 days is better is you wish to appreciate what you see and try out the food in one of the many excellent restaurants. We returned to one such restaurant for lunch prior to the theatre. Giving ourselves a good 2 and a half hours to enjoy our wonderful lunch in a old garden surrounded by ancient walls and climbing roses. I had a frittata with truffles and a bruschetta with truffles, so good and has a main course some good Tuscan beef sliced on a bed of rucola and thin slices of Parmesan and roasted potatoes with rosemary.
After lunch to the play we go, it was written around 1925 by Sacha Guitry, the great French playwright of the XXth century for his wife Yvonne Printemps, who in the 20's and 30's was a great and famous Boulevard Music Hall actress and singer in Paris. There's a full orchestra and dancing and singing to accompany the dialogue. The play is somewhat a strange affair, it is about a visit by Mozart as a young man to a French Baron's house in Paris around 1900. The link is that Mozart as a child visiting Paris with his father Leopold 100 years previously, had played on a harpsichord in the Baron's house. Mozart is a tiresome genius, self-centered and seduces all the ladies of the house with his entreaties.
This is very implausible as a plot line but in the end you realize that this visitor has made the different couples in the house appreciate their love for each other and realize that Mozart's was a sort of spirit who appears and teases mortals to show them the folly of their ways.
The play was in French with subtitles in Italian. It was not a piece of fluff as it might at first glance appear, it had a serious theme underneath.
The play was presented in the chapel of an ancient cloister San Nicolo built in 1191, the walls had remnants of medieval frescoes of Saints and other biblical scenes.
After the play we wanted to walk around Spoleto, unfortunately for us a thunderstorm appeared and we had to retreat to a cafe for drinks, but like all cafes in Italy, the drinks came with nuts, olives, pickles and white peal onions, bread sticks with prosciuto, etc... after 90 minutes we decided to drive back to Rome. Of course the minute we got into the car the rain stopped and blue skies appeared.
That seems to be the weather pattern in that part of Italy. When I visited Umbria, the heat and humidity would build up during the day and there would be a late afternoon shower to clear the air.
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