Pompeii - The Opera

Pompeii is an opera. Or if it isn't, it should be.

Overture. (you are reading the programming)

SETTING: Pompeii. in 62 A.D. a earthquakes destroy parts of the city. On August 24, 79 A.D. Vesuvius explodes - poisonous gas kills much of the populous, ash up to 60 feet covers the city, lava flows (but not actually affecting Pompeii) and Vesuvius collapses inward. Everything in the area is covered and untouched for 1700 years.

CHARACTERS:

Citizens of Pompeii

Gaetano Manfredi, noted guide in his forties. Elegant man-about-ruins.

The Gold Family -

Joe - Tall, distinguished. A true lover of ruins, and scientist inside and out.
Ted - Chestnut hair, scarf and tweed coat blowing in the breeze. A budding historian and archeologist. Producer of odd facts and strange connections.
Elle - Chic, red-haired, sporting a saucy cap and purple leather jacket. Apprentice filmmaker and photographer. It is all about the shot.
Laura - teacher, writer, ruin traveler. Studied in Athens for 8 months; spent her honeymoon it Chichen Izta; conceived son at Tikal, etc.

ACT I - The Grandeur of the Public World!

FIORITURA. The Golds took the train into Pompeii from Sorrento. Of course it was raining. Laura had arranged a private guide because Pompeii, like the Vatican, was better understood under the tutelage of an expert. ENTR´EE Gaetano Manfredi - brisk, elegant with an umbrella, black jacket and polished boots. They passed through the entry way.

PARLANDO. The scale of the city and degree to which is was preserved and background. It is typical Roman town, 20,000 people, height of its glory, a place that wealthy Romans came to visit, a seaside town.

http://www.emsei.psu.edu/~hoaglund/Pompeii/PompeiiMap.jpg

Straight streets leading to a central square or plaza. Shops lining the streets interspersed with entries to private homes. Sidewalks. Stones set in the road that function as crosswalks. Water pipes underground. City provides the main pipes; citizens pay for the hook-ups. Central system for organizing addresses/neighborhoods based on what creature is carved into the public water fountain near your home. ("I live at the third house down from the lion fountain.")

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3543/3792514405_7866ca7216.jpg

Basilica at one end, courts at another, government buildings. Marble stairs leading up to a pillared building. Everything was either covered in marble, frescoes, or mosaic. The Golds are stunned.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/99/302032262_45ecab63a1.jpg

ARIA. 45 minutes has passed and our guide has warmed to us and his subject. Does this sound like your hometown? It is. Societies do not change, he sings, vibrato ringing. The universality and perhaps the real greatness of Rome is that it took good ideas from every culture it encountered, incorporated, refined, tweeked (what have you) and standardized. cymbals crash. curtain closes.

http://pompeii.virginia.edu/aerialforum.jpg

Act II - Ah Home...

ZARUELA. Gaetano then carefully takes the Golds to three homes. A humble "condo." A middle class house. And the home of the wealthy. All have the same basic layout. The difference is in the scale. It is essentially a shot gun shack. Entry hall, main rooms. One could imagine living in these houses.

http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/house.html

RECITATIVO.- the almost mundane-ness of this town. It was cookie-cutter. Romans came, conquered and created virtually the same town layout wherever they went. When Rome created a new town they gave retired generals a house in a new town. Helped Romanize the new town.

VERISMO. The Golds are impressed and yet..in their minds...Rome is great, no doubt. Too bad about that slavery/destroying Jerusalem/thousands dead a the Coloseum bit...

SOTTO VOCE. Then we get to the climax, as it were - the "naughty bits." Pompeii has gorgeous bathhouses, ingenious methods for collecting water, creating steam, etc. They have "fast food" places (shops where pots of food and jugs of wine stood) and signage indicating where the brothels are (penis symbol on the ground to indicate "whores this way")

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1001/936290845_64082877ec.jpg

And inside said brothels are mosaic pictures indicating various sexual acts - a menu perhaps?

ORATORIO. Gaetano. People haven't changed much in what the like...

ACT III - It Happened One Afternoon

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/images/pompeii2.jpg

DRAMMA GIOCOSO. 79 A.D. Pliny wrote a friend, Cornelius Tacitus, describing the happenings of late August 79 AD:

"My mother drew his attention to a cloud of unusual size and appearance.... It was not clear at that distance from which mountain the cloud was rising (it was afterwards known to be Vesuvius); its general appearance can best be expressed as being like an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches, I imagine because it was thrust upwards by the first blast ..."

The suddeness of it is obvious. Bodies are curled up where they were in the midst of working. A dog playing. A shopkeeper and a slave in the store. A pregnant young girl.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/images/pompeii1.jpg

TRILL. Gaetano paints a picture of the immediate impact. Pliny continues:

"You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore."

http://www.danbalsam.com/travel/italy/pompeii/Pompeii_Bodies.jpg

CODA - The Man from Pompeii

Gaetano is a local from the "new" Pompeii. Truly what is most intriguing after the basic Pompeii story is Gaetano and his relationship to this place. His grandfather took him there regularly as a child. He has seen is both grow and diminish. Grow in that more of the site has been excavated and diminish because of the problems of acid rain, climate change and poor archeology techniques.

CADENZA. Because of these things actual digging has stopped at Pompeii. 20-30 percent remains untouched as 21st century figures out how not to destroy the 1st century.

There is a strange synergy between the man and the place, between Gaetano Manfredi and Pompeii, and it would be impossible to describe one without describing the other.

FIN.