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Verdi: Exploring the Italian hometown of a musical genius Posted: 30 Jul 2013 11:00 PM PDT In Busetto, the music of its most famous son echoes about every quarter After a Wagner overload at the opulent annual festival devoted to the composer in Bayreuth, Germany, it was good to come to Busseto, Italy, for a little Verdi appreciation. In the year celebrating the 200th birthday of both musical geniuses, it seemed fitting to visit these two towns intimately associated with them. It turned out, however, that the contrast between Bayreuth and Busseto couldn't have been more striking. Bayreuth was the baroque court of a minor German prince, the Margrave of Bayreuth, and still feels like it. Little Busseto is a market town with one main street and a square. Whereas Wagner came to Bayreuth at the peak of his fame to build an opera house in his own honor, Verdi came to Busseto as a talented but penniless boy. The Italian composer had walked there from nearby Le Roncole, the village of his birth, because a local music lover had a piano that Verdi had been invited to play.   Busseto as it appeared in Verdi's day. Aside from some urban sprawl, the town has changed little. Renaissance revisited Apart from some urban sprawl on its outskirts, Busseto today looks remarkably the same as when Giuseppe Verdi arrived in 1824. Its low defensive walls and gates are gone, but its streets follow the same Renaissance grid. There are some big houses and even a palazzo or two, but these are discreetly hidden behind colonnades that line Via Roma, the main street. The only ostentatiously impressive building is the 16th-century Palazzo Pallavincino, with its moat and baroque gatehouse, lying halfway between the railway station and the town proper. The ancient family of Pallavincino held the old castle in Busseto (it now contains an opera house) but in the 18th century they moved out here, to moated splendor beyond the defensive walls. Whether its former occupants would have appreciated the irony is uncertain, but the mighty Pallavincinos' palace is now a museum (Via Ferdinando Provesi 35; + 39 0524 930 039) devoted to Verdi, an innkeeper's son. Halfway along Via Roma on the stands Palazzo Orlandi, where Verdi composed his opera "Rigoletto." A big sign on the doors reads "Vendesi." (For sale) Palazzo Orlandi, where Verdi composed "Rigoletto;" locals say it's falling apart.The locals lament that you can't even go in to look around; some claim it's falling apart. Given that Verdi came back to live here after the success of his breakthrough opera "Nabucco," it's a shame not more is made of the house. On the town square, it's a different story. Casa Barezzi is where the young Verdi came to play music. Today his piano overlooks Piazza Verdi. It was here that the lanky, dark-haired 17-year-old gave his first public performance, in 1830. Antonio Barezzi, a wealthy merchant, not only was Verdi's first patron but also soon became his father-in-law when his daughter fell in love with the young musician. Today just the main salon of Casa Barezzi (Via Roma 119; ‪+39 0524 931 117) has been restored by the "Amici di Verdi." I walked up steps to the first floor to pay the €2 entry fee. The salon is lofty and spacious for such a small town. Had the adolescent Verdi ever seen anything as grand? The adjoining rooms are taken up with display cases full of drawings, paintings and photographs of Verdi. There's a fascinating display of portraits of nearly every singer who played a major operatic Verdi role. Another section commemorates conductors who have performed at Busseto's Teatro Verdi (‪Piazza Giuseppe Verdi 10; ‪+39 0524 92487) with the batons they've donated. Placido Domingo has pride of place. Theater of honor In 1868, to honor the man they were calling the "Swan of Busseto," the people of his hometown didn't just rename their theater after Verdi, they tore it apart and rebuilt it in a much more opulent style, with a royal box, smoking room and private salon where sopranos could serenade affluent gentlemen from a high balcony. A mythological ceiling was painted in the auditorium with a cherub holding up the word "Verdi" to the Muse of Music. Verdi was said to have been furious when he heard that the building he had loved was being destroyed in his name, but in the end he gave money to help complete the project. Mask of genius ... a production of Verdi's opera "Rigoletto," a story of love, revenge and sacrifice.The auditorium is a lovely, delicate red and white structure of boxes on three tiers. Franco Zeffirelli staged "Aida" here in 2001 to mark the centenary of Verdi's death.   The production is still talked about in the town because of the way Zeffirelli transcended the restrictions of the tiny stage. I spent the night in a hotel (next to the old castle) built in 1999 by the great tenor Carlo Bergonzi when he retired to Busseto. He named it "I Due Foscari" (Piazza Carlo Rossi 15; + 39 0524 930039; rooms from €86/$114) after one of the operas that gave Verdi his name.  Resembling a dark palazzo on the Grand Canal, the hotel is now run by Bergonzi's son, Marco. There are pictures of Verdi on every wall, even in my bedroom. There had been high hopes for the bicentenary this autumn, but while I was in Busseto plans were floundering. Italy's recent economic problems mean there's no money to mount a suitable production in October. At the moment it sounds as if only Wagner will be making a big noise in 2013. Where to stay in Busseto Hotel Ristorante Bar Bistrot Sole, Piazza Giacomo Matteotti 10; +39 (0) 524  930 011; rooms from €90 ($120) Agriturismo Il Bosso, Via Traversante Passera 1,  Busseto; +39 (0) 338 5967 038; rooms from €60 ($80) Where to eat in Busseto Trattoria Verdi, Viale Pallavicino, 21; +39 (0) 524 91610/91352; modern bar/trattoria Cafè Pizzosteria Palazzo Orlandi, Via Roma, 60; +39 (0 )524 91523; snack bar beneath palazzo where Verdi lived Ristorante La Casa Nuova, 59 v. Consolatico Superiore; +39 (0) 524 97817; rural fare Salumeria Sapori Della Bassa Di Belli Maria Cristin, Via Balestra 2; +39 (0) 524 931133; delicatessen near church where Verdi was married Salsamenteria Storica Verdiana Baratta, Via Roma 76;  +39 (0) 524 91066; Verdi-themed delicatessen Tags:  italy tourism art festival

Does 'voluntourism' do more harm than good? Posted: 30 Jul 2013 03:00 PM PDT Orphan-huggers create a market for orphans; well-builders take work from locals; and other things ethical travelers should know A leading ethical travel company has removed all volunteering trips to orphanages from its site, citing concerns that "volunteers are fueling the demand for orphans." We wrote about this topic in 2011 -- here's the piece again, let us know what you think in the comments. Whether it's spending time at an orphanage in Cambodia, or helping build houses in Haiti, ethical tourism, or voluntourism, seems pretty morally unambiguous.  What could possibly be wrong with helping the unfortunate?  This feels even more the case when we are personally involved in making the difference, rather than throwing coins in a collection tin thousands of kilometers away. The result has been a boom in tour companies offering voluntourism opportunities in a wide range of destinations, catering to all levels of commitment.  Want to spend weeks building houses in Port-au-prince, or stop in and paint half a wall in a local school somewhere in Southeast Asia? Somewhere out there, a voluntourism outfit has you covered. And, like many chances to easily do good in the world, the reality is a lot more nuanced. In the case of orphanage tours to places like Siem Reap in Cambodia, the presence of wealthy foreigners wanting to play with parentless kids has actually had the perverse effect of creating a market for orphans in the town.  A system has emerged in which parents will rent their children out for the day to play with gullible backpackers, creating fraudulent orphanages in response to visitors' demand for them. Further, many voluntourism outfits that offer the chance to interact with children perform little to no screening of prospective applicants.  The voluntourism dollars of the pedophile are as indistinguishable as those of the legitimate well-wisher -- a poorly thought-out commercial relationship with terrible potential consequences to those being volunteered upon.  Are you really contributing? The difficulties of doing good abroad are not only limited to voluntourism programs that involve children. Even activities as banal as painting walls or building houses are fraught with ethical concerns.  Does the presence of volunteers really contribute to a community's wellbeing, or are outsiders simply doing work that could have helped local breadwinners earn a living?  Are building materials and technical skills sourced locally, to benefit merchants and artisans in the community, or are they simply shipped in from outside? If your intention as a volunteer is to do good, then these questions matter. They are also questions that, for the most part, a booming voluntourism industry happily ignores.  There are organizations who engage admirably with these issues and work to design properly reasoned volunteering engagements. Yet for the most part, the machinations of the free market have not been kind to ethical volunteering.  More on CNNGo: The price of volunteering in Thailand It's still far too easy to hug a third world orphan unchecked, to waste hundreds of dollars delivering presents or inefficiently trying to build houses and execute development plans in which the community being "developed" has been marginally consulted at best. The roots of much of this unethical behavior and wasteful attempts at doing good lie, in part, in the philosophies underlying many voluntourism organizations.  Anything is better than nothing ... isn't it? The desire of wealthy first-worlders to do good can be treated as a demand for which volunteerism products can be supplied, and that some minor good -- a painted wall or a child smiling for a day -- is better than no good at all. This first view -- that development needs can be packaged as a tour opportunity and sold for profit -- augurs a race to the bottom in ethical behavior.  Volunteer opportunities need to be as convenient (read: short-lived), and emotionally rewarding to the volunteers (read: customers) as possible.  It should come as no surprise then that voluntourism is rarely about the kinds of activities that professional development NGOs undertake. Flexible service projects that allow wealthy tourists to see the locals smile in exchange for minimal hard work are catnip for traveling narcissists. They are also a product that sells predictably well. Real development be damned. The second point of view often given in defense of a poorly conceived or exploitative voluntourism project is harder to unpick.  To claim that having volunteers engaging in inefficient and clumsy development projects is better than no such projects at all is an alluring point of view.  It also misrepresents the situation.  In the now cliché case of orphan-hugging, it's manifestly obvious that in many instances the absence of the voluntourism army would be a preferable situation.  Children can go back to their families instead of being pimped out as objects of affection, and are likely to emerge as psychologically healthier adults when not treated as an emotional plaything. In general, given a choice between spending money to go abroad and engage in a project with a local community for a few weeks, or donating the same amount to an established development organization already present in the area, it should be obvious that staying at home and sending your money instead will almost always be more helpful. Awareness is raised That said, the experience of volunteering is not a one-way street entirely focused on the experience of the recipients to the exclusion of all else.  In the process of volunteering, the privileged first-worlder is also being helped -- albeit in a less obvious way -- towards understanding in very personal terms the lives of the less privileged with whom they share the planet. It's difficult to measure the value of this first-hand understanding against the wish to help needy communities as efficiently as possible.  Yet opening the eyes of those of us wealthy enough to afford the luxury of travel to the realities of inequality is a necessary first step if longer-term solutions to poverty, housing and food insecurity are to ever be found.  And nothing can bring home the emotional reality of these challenges quite as well as engaging with them for yourself. There can be no easy decisions when attempting to weigh up how to voluntour, where to voluntour, or whether to voluntour at all.  Nevertheless, there is a world of difference between ill-considered decisions taken for the purpose of stroking a traveler's ego, and subjective decisions to volunteer after properly considering as much of the moral and practical detail of your engagement as possible.  Voluntourism will likely always remain a compromised industry, but that need not necessarily compromise your decisions as a traveler hoping to do good. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Richard Stupart. Tags:  Tell me about it

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