Shakespeare’s Italy

Published in Sorbet Magazine (May 2014)

Best In Town
Shakespeare’s Italy

Although there is no evidence that William Shakespeare ever went there, his long-standing love affair with Italy has led some experts to suggest that he actually lived there for a while. Whatever the truth may be, there is no denying that the Bard’s plays are immersed in Italian culture and draped in the social fabric of the country, offering a unique guide to Italy.

Priyanka Pradhan

Shakespeare’s Italy- Priyanka Pradhan. Publsihed in Sorbet Magazine (May 2014)

Rome
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!”- Mark Antony in Julius Caesar

Of the 13 plays set in Italy, Shakespeare’s most intense political dramas, including Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Coriolanus are placed against the backdrop of Rome’s daunting fortresses and menacing real-life conspiracies. Shakespeare’s classic Roman tragedies portrayed power, deceit and betrayal through strong Italian characters such as Marcus Brutus, a politician of the late Roman Republic, Pompey the Great, and Mark Antony, the Roman general who fell in love with that infamous Egyptian queen. However, in reality, the most imposing and intimidating of all was the city of Rome itself.

You can visit:
The Roman Forum (Forum Romanum): A rectangular plaza surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the centre of the city. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum.

Padua
“I come to wive it wealthily in Padua”- Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew

One of Shakespeare’s first plays set in Italy, The Taming of The Shrew explored the city of Padua through the eyes of its protagonists, Petruchio and Katherina. In Shakespeare’s time, Padua, a city and commune in the Veneto, northern Italy, was known to be the center of education throughout Europe. The first university in the world (Galileo and Casanova were counted among the alumni of the university) formed the epicenter of the city. Shakespeare used this reputation of Padua and the backdrop of the university as a setting for his play.

You can visit:
The University of Padua in the Palazzo del Bò, founded in 1222 as a school of law and was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe. The University also houses a wooden anatomical amphitheatre in the Medical School, built in the 16^th century.

Venice
“And what news of the Rialto?”- Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice

One of Shakespeare’s most prolific plays, The Merchant of Venice, steers the spectator across the Venetian ghetto, the Rialto, the business district of Venice and the picturesque (and fictional) Belmonte, described as a beautiful port city near Venice. The narrative explores themes of love and friendship, while expertly navigating issues of feminism and racism in erstwhile Italian society against the backdrop of the beautiful canal city. Another play that offers a perspective of Shakespearean Venice as is The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice, which follows the eventual undoing of a general in the Venetian military through jealousy and betrayal.

You can visit:
A walk along the business district, the Rialto Bridge and the many city squares of Venice is a rewarding way to retrace the steps of Shakespeare. A traghetto ferry is another oft-quoted mode of transport in his plays.

Verona
“Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene.”- Chorus, Romeo And Juliet

While Verona is much loved by honeymooners and hopeful singles, the quaint little town is rich in architectural and cultural sights. However, for most, it is synonymous with Juliet calling out to her Romeo from her iconic balcony. While the authenticity of ‘Juliet’s balcony’ at the Via Capello house remains to be seen (it was added as recently as 1936), it remains a popular hot spot. As a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Verona also boasts of a few non-touristic spots, such as quaint gardens, reflecting the typical Romanesque architecture of the town’s residential quarters.

You can visit:
Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore, which is believed to contain the crypt where Romeo and Juliet were married, as well as Juliet’s alleged tomb at the Capuccin Church. A walk down the cobblestoned pathways of the town will reveal beautifully conserved relics from medieval times.

Messina
“I am a wise fellow, and which is more, an officer, and which is more, a householder, and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law”- Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing

Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing is set in the port city of Messina on the island of Sicily, which, at the time, was an independent kingdom ruled by kings of Aragon, a Spanish dynasty. The play, while humorous, also throws light on court politics, gender and class differences and the idea of honor amongst Sicilians. The bard described Sicily in dramatic stokes, peppered with witty repartee and dark humor. Much of the play’s scenes are set indoors, as Shakespeare endeavored to capture the ethos of the Sicilian kingdom, rather than the panoramic beauty of the island.

You can visit:
For those who believe that Shakespeare had Italian origins, Messina holds the key to a number of theories that suggest that he was born in Sicily. Otherwise, visitors can also see the 12^th century Messina Cathedral and the Piazza del Duomo, which date back to the Norman times.

Naples
“If in Naples, I should report this now, would they believe me?” – Gonzalo in The Tempest

Thought by critics to mark the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone, The Tempest tells the story of Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, and his plans to restore his rights by placing his daughter Miranda on the throne. The tale of how he creates the titular tempest in his attempts to bring about the downfall of his brother Antonia and Kind Alonso of Naples takes place on a remote island in the Mediterranean.
The play ends with Prospero regaining his dukedom in the kingdom of Naples.

You can visit:
The Castel Nuevo, built in 1279, for its medieval architecture and its significance as the ‘new castle’ of King Charles I. A grand, white marble arch was built at the castle in 1443, to commemorate King Alfonso’s entry into Naples.

Paparazzi: Captured!

Published in Sorbet Magazine, Issue 4 (May 2014)

Paparazzi: Captured!

[Standfirst]
They’ve been called creeps, stalkers and murderers of privacy, yet the paparazzi have always had their way with the stars. A look at their origins reveals some surprising facts and documents how these celebrity-chasing photographers have changed with the times.

By PriyankaPradhan

Paparazzi Captured: Priyanka Pradhan. Published in Sorbet Magazine (May 2014)

When Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini named a character ‘Paparazzo’ in his iconic filmLa Dolce Vita(released 1960), he could not have predicted that it would enter the official English lexicon as a common noun. Today, the global currency of that word (plural: paparazzi) is used to describe intrusive, offending photographers, often accused of voyeurism and stalking.

Fellini’s Paparazzo was inspired by a real-life Italian photographer, Tazio Secchiaroli, who was famous in the ‘50s, for capturing popular actresses red-handed with their paramours, celebrities in the middle of domestic quarrels and several ‘candid’ shots of actors caught unawares. When Fellini met Secchiaroli in Via Veneto, he was shocked to learn some of the photographer’s trade secrets. Secchiaroli had confessed that while ‘watching’ and stalking celebrities day and night was the norm, he even went so far as to puncture the tires of celebrities’ cars in order to trap them for a shot. These ‘caught in the moment’ images could fetch upto six million Italian Liras (US$ 3000) for photographers like Secchiaroli at the time.

Fellini later explainedthat the name of this photographer’s character was derived from the Italian word papatacci, which loosely translates to ‘large mosquito’ and razzo, which means ‘light’. In the film, Paparazzo’s character traveled on his scooter or in his Fiat 500, which enabled him to navigate the streets of Rome with the agility of a mosquito, in his mission to chase and capture his quarry with his 1950s’ style, flashbulb camera.

Cut to a decade later, from 1960s celebrity-obsessed Rome to 1970s Hollywood, when paparazzi mania was at its height and the phenomenon of weekly tabloids had just begun to surface. From the public’s fascination with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, former First Lady of the United States, to the adulation surrounding actress Elizabeth Taylor, one paparazzo, Ron Galella, captured it all.

The Italian-American photographer, dubbed ‘Paparazzo Extraordinaire’ by Newsweek and ‘The Godfather of US paparazzi culture’ by Time and Vanity Fair respectively, did not stop at anything to get the perfect shot. As the subject of the documentary Smash His Camera, not even a restraining order from the court, demanding that he stay 164 feet away from Jackie O and her family, or a broken jaw, courtesy of an angry Marlon Brando or jail time in Mexico could keep him from the task at hand.

Job hazards also included long and agonizing waiting periods, just to get the perfect shot. “Once, I was locked alone in a warehouse in London, from Friday, 4pm to Monday, 9am,” he tells Sorbet. “I had to wait for a wedding party to capture Bob Wilson, a former Scotland football player. Another time, I paid a steward to lock me in for the weekend at The London warehouse on the Thames, so I could shoot Liz Taylor and Richard Burton on their yacht, the Kalizma. My favorite hiding places, however, were just trees – I used trees as cover to photograph Jackie and John Jr. in Central Park, for example.”

Today, some of 83-year-old Galella’s work has travelled to galleries across the world, such as Tate Modern in London and the Helmut Newton Foundation Museum of Photography in Berlin. His most famous ‘Windblown Jackie’ portrait is housed at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, although the story behind it is a far cry from his current celebrity status.“I hid in the backseat of a taxi to capture my Windblown Jackie,” he says. “The driver honked and she turned, giving me that Mona Lisa smile. She didn’t know it was me because the camera was covering my face, but when I got out of the taxi, she recognized me and immediately put on her big sunglasses. She asked, ‘Are you pleased with yourself?’ I cheekily said, ‘Yes, thank you,’ and left.”

In fact, Galella had longstanding trouble with Jackie O. “One significant event gave the documentary about me its name,” he says. On 24 September 1969, I was shooting Jackie and John Jr. bicycling in Central Park, when she spotted me and told her secret service agent, “Mr. Connelly, SMASH HIS CAMERA!” Fortunately he didn’t, but then two other secret service agents demanded my film on Jackie’s order. I did not surrender the film, and I was arrested for harassment. The charges were dismissed by the judge. I had won, but Jackie refused to pay my legal fees. That was the beginning of what would later turn into the 26-day trial I faced in 1972. I lost that case, but I won a lot of publicity, which money couldn’t buy. I thanked Jackie for the publicity in 1974, when I gave her a copy of my first book, Jacqueline. She kept that book in her library until she died, and as I understand, it was donated along with many of the photos from both our trials to the JFK Library in Boston.”

In a career spanning three decades, Galella continued to photograph celebrities at their best and worst. After the Marlon Brandon broken jaw incident, he followed him with a football helmet for protection and continued to chase Burton, even after being seriously beaten up by his bodyguards. Later in the 80s and 90s, he snapped celebrities such as John Travolta, Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger.

This drive and ambition, however, was more of a survival instinct, according to Galella, a job he took up in 1958 upon graduating from Art Center College in Hollywood, when he could not afford a studio in Manhattan. “I was forced to shoot on the street at premieres, Broadway openings, Studio 54, etc., and develop my film in my darkroom in the Bronx,” he explains.

“Throughout my career, I was able to offer more realistic, truthful pictures of celebrities rather than the posed pictures that studio photographers like Avedon produced, which were more commercial as opposed to editorial. However, the photographers in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita were fairly negative since they ganged up on stars and provoked them to get more sellable shots. They were actually very much like the photographers of today, especially those in L.A.”

Today, celebrities and Hollywood starlets have also learnt to use the paparazzi as a PR vehicle, an exercise in self-promotion. However, these set-up paparazzi shots do not fetch more than a $75 each, while genuine pictures of certain celebrities are extremely lucrative, and can bring in millions of dollars for the paparazzo. The quality of paparazzi pictures may have been reduced to horrifying crotch shots of desperate Hollywood starlets seen stepping out of cars, and vintage flashbulb cameras may have been replaced by sophisticated super-zoom digital cameras, but the spirit of paparazzi remains unchanged. The ghost of Fellini’s Paparazzo perhaps still lurks behind trees and in the backseat of cars, for that perfectly incriminating shot of the Next Big Thing.