The suspended time, a world out of the world. Not in the sense of a bubble but of A reality transfigured by goliardia, even ferocious satire, dorum rice, provocation and, sometimes, even by a bitter disillusionment.
Semel in year Licet Improvesaid the Latins, once a year it is legitimate to go crazy. Viareggio He does it every year, for one hundred and fifty -two years. The February 25, 1873, A fat Tuesday, with a parade of carriages covered with flowers by Viareggio well along the Via Regia, the first road of the city.
The carnival is “institutionalized” the following year with the Grasso Tuesday parade, on February 17, on the occasion of which the Carnival company asked for the authorization of the mayor in order to be able to burn in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele a statue of Carnival King filled with Piica powder. From here on, it is a crescendo: Since 1883 the era of allegorical floats begins, which replace the flowering carriages; There is still no papier -mâché, but the buildings are the work of the masters of the ax, the Calafati, the artisans and are made of iron and wood.
From elite phenomenon, reserved for nobles and high bourgeoisie that came to play the casino, the carnival becomes mass, popular (and popular) event.
In 1901, the parade moved from via Regia to the seafront (the walk, as they call it here). In ’21 the carnival is very serious: he has his official anthem (they asked to express it to Giacomo Puccini But the great composer, of Torre del Lago, indicated a certain Icilio Sadun) and also a magazine that is published every year.
In the 1920s, the papier -mâché as the main material for the preparation of allegorical floats while in 1931 it was born Burlamaccothe official mask of the event, which the Viareggini, every year, exhibit on all the balconies, born from the fantasy of the futurist painter Uberto Bonetti, who operates a synthesis among the chess of Arlecchino, the cloak of Dr. Balanzone, the Pom Pon of Pierrot and the rugantino hat putting together the burland and Buffalmacco, Florentine painter of the fourteenth century Di Giovanni Boccaccio made a game of Creduloni.
In 1954 the Carii parade was broadcast live on TV by Rai, a historical event because it is the first “external” in the history of state TV. The direction is by Giovanni Coccorese and the comment of Bruno Ambrosi. Is fine. And consecrates the Carnival of Viareggio as the Carnival of Italy. An inacalfible record, very firm still today. For historical reasons, of course, but not only.
Because those who come to Viareggio do not only attend an event that last year recalled about 900 thousand people but enter the feeling of a people. It drops into a mood, As they say today, which is then much more than a mood. The barriers fall, tensions, the lawyer and the accountant rise on the wagon of the full point of the chariot or mask to participate in one of the many parties that take place in the districts such as the one at the Darsena near the port.
Banned seriousness, goliardia as a way of being in the world, squeeze as the art of being together, lAt an intelligent and desecrating provocation that does not know frank areas: politics, religion, media, social networks, institutions, leaders of the world.
Some of the nine first category wagons competing for the Viareggio 2025 Carnival (Courtesy Carnival Foundation of Viareggio)
When Trump, to say, did not yet know (almost) nobody, before he won the primaries in 2015, in Viareggio they dedicated a wagon to around the world. In 2019, during the first term, here he is in the features of a video game warrior while walking on the crowd or while dreaming of conquering and colonizing the moon.
To go a little further back, Cossiga took it because in 1993, in full Tangentopoli, he was depicted as a snake that came out of the lower abdomen of Craxi, forcing the Foundation to censor the offending chariot in the official Carnival magazine of that year.
Stories, sketches and chronicles of the newspapers that can be known and admired in the beautiful exhibition set up at the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art “Lorenzo Viani” (title: From the “big girls” to the sketches of the Carnival, four centuries of illustrated satire, open until 11 May), a history of satire from the seventeenth century to date but also a history of Italy through satire and sketches of the Carnival Carnival floats in a ride that starts from the years to fifty and reaches the two thousand.
The only interruption, the war, from 1941 to ’45, and for this reason the two curators of the exhibition, Walter Veltroni and Roberta Martinelli, They asked the Masters of the Carristi today to imagine and draw sketches for the carnival of those years, when Europe was tight in the grip of dictatorships and Italy traveled on the edge of the abyss until it definitively falls.
In the fifties the slow rebirth, the sixty of the economic boom, slight and carefreethe seventies of the dispute in the squares with the wagons that target the historical compromise, the oil crisis, the lira devalued, With a Carnival king tattered like the Belpaese.
Then the eighty of Craxi arrive, now depicted as Superman, now as a courageous leader, even too much (the head turns around and appears that of the Duce). And Craxi in Viareggio goes there, he does not take it, he sits in the Vip stands and says: «At the carnival I am used to it, I live a kind of permanent carnival what Italian political life is. The only thing I can’t stand are the Foz of Forattini “.
The nineties of Tangentopoli follow the first republic with Di Pietro depicted as an exorcist with the constitution in one hand and the handcuffs in the other and the leaders of the parties as vampires who with corruption suck the blood of the Italians.
Over the years, the satire has faded until it disappeared (almost) completely, even if this year she has returned as a theme of the carnival and all the events that characterize it.
The fault of the politicians (also), almost impossible today to be satire, between social gaffes and continuously jet externations on the whatever.
Here, therefore, that politics gives way to the staff, to the social, to the anxieties and dramas of our times, from children sacrificial victims of the wars to the ecological question, up to the social media that hammer our brain and make us more and more alone, while the time escapes us (it is the theme of the chariot “it is late is late” by Matteo Raciti).
This year in the wagons and in group masks there is a lot of fairy tale, some dystonies such as the chariot “Sic transit glory mundi!” which stages a phantom conclave that ends with the election of a papess, to give an account of the debate in progress on the role of women in the Church.
There is, returning, political satire like Avanzini’s cart “For a healthy and robust constitution” Where Prime Minister Meloni and his reform of the premierate is targeted while Silvio Berlusconi, from above, satisfied “vigil” and sly on Italian political events.
Another wagon during one of the masked courses of this year (Ph Courtesy Carnival Foundation of Viareggio)
The race between the wagons is very important, stimulates the fantasy of the retirements, relaunches infinite discussions on who was the best and at the end of the carnival, at the time of the proclamation of the winners, as the president of the Foundation tells, Maria Lina Marcucci, “It is not uncommon to feel disapproval whistles because someone is discontent of the verdict.”
This year the works in competition are in total 29: 9 first category wagons, the most mammoth, 4 second floats, 8 group masked and 8 isolated masks.
It is a transversal and intergenerational party because it involves everyone, adults and boys, fathers and children, grandparents and grandchildren (in 2022, to say, there was an Achille Lauro giant with the pope hat).
The children (they are 1 in 4, explain from the Foundation) are in line in front of the Kinder stand, the only entertainment space dedicated exclusively to children, to play the game of the pot, “declined” all to chocolate. The brand has collaborated with the foundation of the Carnival since 2019, sharing the same spirit, at the service of the boys and their families.
Attending the masked course (that they are called the six fashion shows every year) is not enough. To understand what Carnival is in Viareggio you have to go to the “Cittadella del Carnevale” (inaugurated in 2001)on the outskirts of the city, where in the huge hangars, starting from the previous summer, we work on the wagons whose sketches are approved in July by a special technical commission. It takes 6 months to build one and entails, among the various things, the use of A ton of paper paper for the papier -mâché, 80 liters of glue per day, steel and iron for the spine, Hand seams, tempera, acrylic, glassing and mechanical pistons for the most extreme movements such as, for example, that of a gigantic dancer who changes the dress during the parade in the wagon “as you want me”.
In the Historical museum, Instead, you can get an idea-between amarcords, posters and vintage photos-of the long history of this feast-institution that mixes technologies, futuristic and fairytale themes, funes and nineteenth-century carrucles with technological screens (such as that of this year’s “social” wagon, the work of Massimo and Alessandro Breschi).
In these days, Viareggio looks like the set of a Fellini film mixed with Philip Dick and Steven Spielberg. But the carnival, in these parts, is also a gigantic teaching, that of do not confuse seriousness with serious ostentation, The modesty with the exaggeration and not to notice the damage that can do not cultivate a healthy sense of ridicule.
The chariot dedicated to Maria De Filippi and the Kinder stand (Ph Courtesy Carnival Foundation of Viareggio)
