Addio Luciano Pavarotti...

We awoke to the news of Luciano Pavarotti's passing today. It's is a sad day indeed for Italians and especially the Modenese, with the silencing of a national treasure such as Pavarotti.
Grande Pavarotti! The quintessential Italian with his love of food, family, football, home, and, of course, singing. I have put together a few videos I found on You Tube .
The first is Pavarattoi in a promotional video for his hometown of Modena where is speaks about all of his passions. The second is a short clip of his father singing briefly and speaking about the differences between his and his famous son's voice. Here on the news they featured a few old clips of his father singing at the age of 80 and still quite a beautiful voice. He told of how his son started singing at the age of about 6 or 7 and sang in the local cathedral. Another old news cli was of the two of them singing in that very cathedral together in 1978. It was quite moving. The last two videos are of Pavarotti's last public performance in Italy which was at the 2006 Torino Winter Olympic Games opening ceremonies.

Travelogue of Modena with Luciano Pavarotti



Pavarotti's father



Pavarotti singing at the opening ceremonies of the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics

and with Andre Bocelli


Farewell Luciano Pavarotti.......
you will be missed.

The Olympics One Year Later

It's hard to believe another year has past and we are thinking about the great times that we had last year during the 2006 Winter Olympics. We met loads of people and had a lot of laughs. We're still telling stories about all the people we had staying with us and around the valley and our nightly catch up briefings back at Bella Baita from the guests filtering back at all hours of the night and morning. Everyone would stop in for a bit of debriefing and a round or two of locally made beer, genepy or some such interesting nightcap. Now we're in Colorado and have had the privilege to meet back up with some of our former Olympics guests for dinner and hearing retelling of stories and new or perhaps unedited versions of some of the goings on of that time. Wow, what a truly memorable time we had. It was truly a once in a lifetime memory for us and our valley. The photo of the autographed flag below is, as one of our summer guests put it, "Fabrizio's treasure". It's adorning one of our rooms walls for now, but we are working toward a major transformation of our "disco" room into the "Olympia" room where we will be able to bring our cooking class to another level and have larger classes and a general all round room for groups and all sorts of activities. So while we are here in Colorado we are doing lots of promotion and have already done a couple of dinner demonstrations with a few more lined up. We're going to put Val Chisone on the map yet, and pick up where the Olympics left off. Torino had a one year after ceremony last saturday and although we missed it, we have been thinking about those days and nights, celebrating again with some of the friends we made during that time.
Here's to making more memories!