Travel
in the old Genoa of the 50' years
Back
to Mario Magonio
Back to the Theatre Hall
This is a travel prohibited to the minors of 50 years......! a travel in Genoa of the first post-war period when Mario Magonio has created his first Puppet Theatre. In that time Genoa was a microcosm of quarters all very separated and self-sufficient. Squares and the streets were full of children playing in the roads. Dressed with old clothes ,generally of greater brother and destined to smallest, they lived practically in the road controlled far away from the old grandmothers that, seated on a chair in road, worked to mesh chatting with the neighbors. everybody was known from others, the solidarity was great and the children entered and exited from the houses always left with the doors opened. The pilferers did not exist, the gangsters were in circulation with due caution in the late hours of the evening maintaining anyway respectfull relations of good cohabitation with the inhabitants. The quarter of "Le Vigne", where Magonio lived, gravitated around to the Church and the Oratory, the boys served the Mass and the girls sang in the chorus. On Sunday everybody at the solemn Mass at 10 hours in the morning with the new dress of the festivity. The boys with their short also in the most rigid winter, the girls with colored dresses with ribbons and laces sewn from the mothers. The greater problem were the shoes, recycle and resoled imany times, always too much great for that small feet. a number more for use them for many years! In summer everybody at sea, with bread with salt and oil wrapped in a piece of rough paper, at the best seaside in Genoa the San Desiderio and the San Nazaro or "La Cava" where the children defied themselves to swim to the wide sea until it was possible to see the three cupolas of the church of Carignano. The quarter was very heterogenous with a lot of
characteristic personages, typical figures of that small world: The blind man
Roberto with that beautifulst tenor voice playing the fisarmonica in Vico Casana,
the seller of the newspaper "Il Corriere Mercantile" screaming the latest
news that after nobody was able to found on the newspaper, " Briculi " the
courier express courier in bicycle, the first pony express of the history, always so
drunk to lose the way to reach jhis warehouse, Maria of the Trattoria Maria in vico
Testadoro that with few liras served a plate of her formidable home-made ravioli,
Bacci the vendor of roast chestnuts in Campetto, the old woman at Soziglia selling
lavender to perfume the linen (..spigu..spigu bellu!) and more the ancient works of
past time: the clock repairer at Oscar Linke, Macciò the shoemaker in Cernaia
square, coalseller in Lavagna square that in summer was selling ice in pieces, the
baker in the deep of vico Indoratori where all the women of the quarter used to
bring cakes for being cooked in the owen. Miss. Rosalba who repaired the nylon
stockings in a small hall of the Senarega public square, the used-books sellers in
via Banchi, the embroiderer, the tripe-seller of the Soziglia and Vico Casana, the milliner
with her funniest bonnets in the display window of Vico delle Vigne, the
perfumed shops of farinata in Sottoripa, and more a myriad of laboratories of
craftsmen who worked on plain air in the road. |
GENOA IN A POSTCARD
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