Carnevale of Venice, the Most Flamboyant of all Pre-lenten Celebrations
The modern Carnevale of Venice, a celebration of costume, exhibition and sweet delicacies like nowhere else, dates from 1979. It is the 10-day spectacle of party and disguise prior to the Christian season of Lent. Resurrected from a long dormancy to promote tourism, it now entails throngs of people disguising their faces behind decorative masks while others dress in spectacular costumes.
Musicians, dancers and vendors of sweets populate the streets while overhead a breathtaking demonstration unrolls. Its name: the “Volo del Angelo” (Flight of the Angel).
The “Flight” dates from the 16th Century, when a Turkish tightrope walker, traversed a rope stretched from a boat in the basin in front of Saint Mark’s Square, up to the Campanile (bell tower), from where he could pay homage to the Doge as he sat on the balcony of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace). That feat earned the title of “Volo del Turco” (Flight of the Turk). Complexity was introduced some years later, when a second rope was actually stretched to the Doge’s balcony. The acrobat would descend from the Campanile and give the Doge a bouquet. Often, he was thanked with a donation of money.
A tightrope walker, Il Volo del Turco, the Flight of the Turk from the Campanile to a barge below
As the ceremony evolved, it continued until the day when some young Venetians wanted to repeat the feat, this time wearing large wings, strapped to their backs. Thereafter, the show was named “Volo del Angelo” (Flight of the Angel). In the carnival of 1759 an acrobat from a well-known local family lost his balance and crashed disastrously into the crowd. That caused one further change, with the decision to eliminate the acrobat and send a wooden dove down from the bell tower instead, to release flowers and confetti. After that, the event was called the “Flight of the Colombina”.
The Carnival is often mocked for its commercialism, but its roots go deep into Venetian history. The first record of the Venetian Carnevale dates from 1094. With the Venetian love of spectacle and mockery, it progressed in ebbs and flows of debauchery until 1797 when it all ended. That was the year that Napoleon conquered the Venetian Republic. Shortly thereafter the Austrians wrested control from the French, then forbade the Carnival once and for all!
Starting in 1979 Il Volo della Colombina was officially reinstated to open this magic festivity. 2001, brought the most recent change – a woman, this time securely and safely fastened to a pulley, riding on the line, made her descent as the reincarnated “Volo del Angelo”.
But there is more to Carnevale than overhead spectacles. Venice is not Carnivale without "fritelle"
Walking through the streets called calli and crossing the silent canals, the sweet scent of these little delicacies pervades the atmosphere of the city. The first citation of the recipe, dating from the 1300s is maintained in a library in Rome. The ingredients are eggs, flour, sugar, lemon and raisins. They have remained, almost without change, for nearly eight centuries.
Pasticceria Tonolo, one of Venice’s finest purveyors of frittelle
They are a real institution of Venice Carnivale. In fact in 17th century the "fritoleri" were professional people who prepared a variation of the sweet "pancakes" by mixing eggs, sugar, flour, pine nuts and raisins on wooden tables and then frying them in oil, butter or pork fat. They organized a large cooperative in order to of assign to everyone an area of exclusive activity and to preserve the tradition by allowing only the families’ children to succeed their fathers.
With the fall of Venice Republic, the cooperative dissolved but the fritoleri remained active on the streets of city. In the eighteenth century they were nominated as the “national Sweet of the State of Veneto”. As such, they were made famous in a 1755 painting by Pietro Longhi – “La Venditrice di Frittole (The Frittole Seller).
La Venditrice di Frittole - Pietro Longhi
But the influence of the "fritella" also influenced other cultures, so much so that we even find a Jewish frittela, which Venetian Jews still prepare today on the occasion of the Purim Feast, a Jewish holiday in celebration of the deliverance of the Jews as recorded in the book of Esther. It is also known as the Feast of Lots (Purim being the Hebrew word for “lots”).