RONDÒ VENEZIANO: VENICE IN PERIL

Rondò Veneziano is an Italian and Swiss chamber orchestra led by composer Gian Piero Reverberi and formed by him in 1979. They still tour to this day, despite Reverberi pushing eighty, and will be performing in Lucerne on 20th October. What is unusual about the ensemble is that, although specialising in forms of music from the Baroque and Classical periods, particularly the rondo, hence their name, they have a modern bass and drum rhythm section and synthesisers. Specifically, there are usually nine members: one bassist, one drummer, three violinists, one violist, one cellist, one oboist and one flotist. This updates classical orchestral compositions, both rearrangements of old works and new original pieces, into more of a classic or prog rock intermediary. Rondò Veneziano have always worn period costumes when performing, which distinguishes the group from any possible session musicians to create an extended orchestra for live performances; but for their album La Serenissima, released in English as Venice in Peril, the orchestra themselves sometimes appeared as robots in period costume for publicity events, reflecting the artwork of the album cover and thus aesthetically blending tradition and futurism. There is, then, with regard to tradition, a definite congruence with the exhortions of a certain poet-philosopher of Italian fascism to 'make it new.'

 

 

The futurist interplay for the album La Serenissima is not mere window dressing, for there is a serious point to it. La Serenissima was the traditional and romantic Italian name for the Republic of Venice, and Rondò Veneziano are named after their eponymous first composition, which would translate into English as 'Venetian Rondo', following the restauration of the mediaeval Venetian Carnival during the late 1970s, in which attendees would dress in baroque masques, perruques and costumes. The piece 'Rondò Veneziano' itself was chosen by Silvio Berlusconi to open and close the day's programming after the launch of the Canale 5 station. Yet Reverberi also, like many others who care about such things, realised that the city of Venice had stood precariously upon the rafts and piles for 500 years and was slowly sinking into the Adriatic Sea, and wished to raise awareness of Venice's potential loss. What was created by European ingenuity was being destroyed by European neglect. As the sleeve to the album Venice in Peril states:

 

"Imagine, a distant future where man might have neglected one of the most beautiful cities in the world - Venice. Italian classical music - but with a difference, has remained as an only reminder of the magic and romance of its ancient splendours. What could happen to Venice is the story of Rondò Veneziano...."

 

In recent years, Venice's potential loss to the sea has been used to justify the globalist politics of climate change, which is what man-made climate change theory is really all about. The propaganda is always steered towards rising waters rather than sinking buildings. Yet the globalist elites are not really interested in Venice other than in its political usefulness. The ones of Jewish background would love to see the end of Venice, for it represents many of the heights of European engineering, art and architecture and many of the historical and cultural scenes of of Jewish ignominy. It represents, to paraphrase the aforementioned Ezra Pound, what they have not achieved. To such people, Venice is merely a cash cow to be exploited until it dies, hence the inactivity in relation to continual damage done to the old harbour and lagoon by docking cruise ships, the latest incident coming just days ago as the Opera MSC scraped along the dockside before crashing into another boat. Equally, native Venetians have complained of escalating prices both in shops and of property, and can no longer find an affordable place to live in the city their ancestors helped create. Ordinary shops are, in any case, disappearing and being replaced by cafés and tat stores for tourists to squeeze every last cent out of the city before it sinks.

 

 

One has to ask the question: why do so many people flock to Venice? Is it not for the aesthetics of the quintessentially European tradition that the globalist elites deconstruct at every opportunity? Is it not because fewer beautiful structures remain with every passing year, torn down and replaced by post-brutalist architecture? The fact is that Venice could easily be saved given existing technology, but the cost would be astronomical; and, given the bourgeois elites' materialist values and their hatred of the beautiful and ethnically European, the glory of Venice - of 'la Serenissima' - will be lost as long as these elites remain in power. A new order is needed: one that will value the local, the organic and the spiritual as opposed to the internationalist, the political and the materialist. The video that accompanied the piece 'La Serenissima' from the eponymous album, animated by Guido Manuli, addresses the theme of technology rescuing old Venice from the waves. Unlike many Spenglerites on the Aut Right, I believe the White European power of technology will prove to be what saves us from les damnés de la terre and helps preserve our heritage and legacy and raise us to new vistas going into the future. Certainly, Rondò Veneziano have embraced the idea of technological innovation being the catalyst for cultural renewal.