TRAVEL TUESDAY 467 - IGUAZÚ FALLS, BRAZIL, ARGENTINA

“Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.” - Mikhail Lermontov

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us.

Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only. Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately.

Iguazú Falls or Iguaçu Falls (Guarani: Chororõ Yguasu, Spanish: Cataratas del Iguazú; Portuguese: Cataratas do Iguaçu) are waterfalls of the Iguazu River on the border of the Argentine province of Misiones and the Brazilian state of Paraná. Together, they make up the largest waterfall system in the world. The falls divide the river into the upper and lower Iguazu. The Iguazu River rises near the heart of the city of Curitiba. For most of its course, the river flows through Brazil; however, most of the falls are on the Argentine side. Below its confluence with the San Antonio River, the Iguazu River forms the border between Argentina and Brazil.

The name Iguazú comes from the Guarani or Tupi words "y", meaning "water", and “ûasú", meaning “big". Legend has it that a deity planned to marry a beautiful woman named Naipí, who fled with her mortal lover Tarobá in a canoe. In a rage, the deity sliced the river, creating the waterfalls and condemning the lovers to an eternal fall. The first European to record the existence of the falls was the Spanish Conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541. It was inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2013.

Upon seeing Iguazu, the United States First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly exclaimed, "Poor Niagara!” (which falls, at 50 m, are a third shorter). Often, Iguazu also is compared with Victoria Falls in Southern Africa, which separates Zambia and Zimbabwe. Iguazu is wider but is split into roughly 275 distinct falls and large islands, whereas Victoria has the largest curtain of water in the world, at more than 1,600 m wide and over 100 m in height.

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ART SUNDAY - PETER GERASIMON

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough." - Rabindranath Tagore 

Peter Gerasimon was born in 1951 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, one of eight children of Russian/German immigrants. Very early in his life he developed an interest in fine arts and attended art classes, despite advice from relatives and friends that this was not a secure career choice. Although he preferred to learn the hard way, by trial and error, he did develop his skills formally through art studies at the Escuela de Artes Quilmes, Argentina 1966-1967 and a course at the Famous Artists' School for Talented Young People 1969-1971.

Not convinced that the arts could support him in the future, Peter pursued a career in economics and business management, but painting remained his passion. Even on his business travels he always found some time to draw sketches and produce an occasional painting. In early 1996 he gave up his busy management career to go after his passion and become a full time artist. He set up his home studio and gallery, “Glenrowan Studios” in Gisborne, Victoria, near the Macedon Ranges and met with instant success.

Gerasimon has participated in some Art Shows in Australia and has obtained several Awards at the Berwick, Ivanhoe and Woodend Art Shows.

The art of Gerasimon is a mix of the realistic with the naïve, his canvases often depicting everyday scenes, streetscapes and landscapes in a rather dispassionate and detached manner, which nevertheless manages to evince emotion in the viewer. His paintings also include depictions of Australian flora and fauna, which border on the genre of scientific illustration, while his still life painting often evokes a deeper symbolic meaning. Still other types of paintings include commissioned work and illustrative material. More of the artist’s oeuvre can be found on his website (http://www.gerasimon.com.au/).

The Painting above is his “As Time Goes By” a view in St Kilda, Melbourne.

MUSIC SATURDAY - DOMENICO ZIPOLI

“Music is the greatest communication in the world. Even if people don’t understand the language that you’re singing in, they still know good music when they hear it.” - LouRawls 

Domenico Zipoli (17 October 1688 – 2 January 1726) was an Italian Baroque composer who worked and died in Córdoba (Argentina). He became a Jesuit in order to work in the Reductions of Paraguay where he taught music among the Guaraní people. He is remembered as the most accomplished musician among Jesuit missionaries.

Zipoli was born in Prato, Italy, where he received his elementary musical training. However, there are no records of him having entered the cathedral choir. In 1707, and with the patronage of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, he was a pupil of the organist Giovani Maria Casini in Florence. In 1708 he briefly studied under Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples, then Bologna and finally in Rome under Bernardo Pasquini. Two of his oratorios date to this early period: “San Antonio di Padova” (1712) and “Santa Caterina, Virgine e Martire”(1714). Around 1715 he was made the organist of the Church of the Gesù (a Jesuit parish, the mother church for The Society of Jesus), in Rome, a prestigious post. At the very beginning of the following year, he finished his best known work, a collection of keyboard pieces titled “Sonate d’intavolatura per organo e cimbalo”. 

For reasons that are not clear, Zipoli travelled to Seville, Spain, in 1716, where, on 1 July, he joined the Society of Jesus with the desire to be sent to the Reductions of Paraguay in Spanish Colonial America. Still a novice, he left Spain with a group of 53 missionaries who reached Buenos Aires on 13 July 1717. He completed his formation and sacerdotal studies in Córdoba (in contemporary Argentina, during 1717–1724) though, for the lack of an available bishop, he could not be ordained priest.

All through these few years he served as music director for the local Jesuit church. Soon his works came to be known in Lima, Peru. Struck by an unknown infectious disease, Zipoli died in the Jesuit house of Córdoba, on 2 January 1726. A previous theory placing his death in the ancient Jesuit church of Santa Catalina, in the hills of the Province of Córdoba, has now been discredited. His burial place has never been found.

Zipoli continues to be well known today for his keyboard music; many of them are well within the abilities of beginning to intermediate players, and appear in most standard anthologies. His Italian compositions have always been known but recently some of his South American church music was discovered in Chiquitos, Bolivia: Two Masses, two psalm settings, three Office hymns, a “Te Deum Laudamus” and other pieces. A Mass copied in Potosí, Bolivia in 1784, and preserved in Sucre, Bolivia, seems a local compilation based on the other two Masses. His dramatic music, including two complete oratorios and portions of a third one, is mostly gone. Three sections of the Mission opera “San Ignacio de Loyola” – compiled by Martin Schmid in Chiquitos many years after Zipoli’s death, and preserved almost complete in local sources – have been attributed to Zipoli.

It seems that the Guarani, the Chiquitos and the other people in the Jesuit areas of South America quite simply fell in love with the music that the missionaries brought with them. One priest wrote: “Give me an orchestra and I will convert all of South America”, and the fact that Zipoli and other mission composers wrote not just church music, but secular works too gives us some idea of how music was a major part of life on the reductions.

More on Baroque music in South America can be read in Jane Shuttleworth’s article: “Araujo to Zipoli: Baroque music in South America”.

You may also see the excellent film “The Mission” that looks (amongst other things…) at the love of the native South American people for European music.

MOVIE MONDAY - THE BURNING PLAIN

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” - Oscar Wilde

We watched a very good movie last weekend. It was Guillermo Arriaga’s 2008 movie “The Burning Plain” with Charlize Theron, John Corbett, Kim Basinger, Joaquim de Almeida, Jennifer Lawrence and José María Yazpik. Arriaga has written the screenplay of this movie, but he also has several other screen-writing successes under his belt: “Babel” (2006), “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” (2005), “21 Grams” (2003), “Amores Perros” (2000), amongst others.

The film is quite complex as it is told in flash-forwards/flashbacks, examining the lives of seemingly unconnected individuals, who by the end of the film are intimately interconnected. The themes are infidelity, motherhood, self-image and self-worth, childhood and different forms of love. The story is straightforward enough as the ending will show, however, following a trend amongst “modern” film-makers, it has been made as complicated as possible by showing it to us out of order, in temporal and geographical disarray. This device detracts from the compelling story, and draws attention to the film-maker’s technique, and away from the drama that is central to the plot.

“The Burning Plain” starts with very dramatic scene in which a caravan in the middle of the southwestern US desert blows up and is enveloped by all-consuming plains. This event is the connection point for all characters of the film, only we, as viewers, do not know it yet. Arriaga tells the story of four women and a young girl: Sylvia (Charlize Theron) is a restaurant owner who has an affair with one of her married employees (John Corbett), but is deeply unsatisfied and sleeps with other men; Gina (Kim Basinger) is a typical American housewife, except that she is a breast cancer survivor and is cheating on her husband (Brett Cullen) with a Mexican man named Nick (Joaquim de Almeida); Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence), Gina’s daughter, has the most problems, especially after she starts a relationship with Nick’s son Santiago (JD Pardo); Maria, a young girl who travels from Mexico to the United States with a family friend to find her long lost mother.

The film is gritty and confronting, with several scenes and themes that some people may find extremely challenging. It makes several important points about contemporary morals, “modern” relationships and family ties. There is an underlying sub-theme about cultural differences between Mexicans and Americans but this is subtle and not overly explored. Sylvia is played extremely well by Theron, who manages to be convincing, powerful, vulnerable and intense, just as the role demands. Some of the most touching and poignant moments in the film come from Basinger, who is usually good at playing damaged, vulnerable women. From the males, de Almeida has an immensely sensitive and tender role to deliver, which he does exceedingly well given his fame as a rough crime lord in “Desperado”. Lawrence plays her difficult role with aplomb and maturity justifying the Mastroianni Award for “Most Promising Newcomer”, which she won at the Venice Film Festival. Many of the supporting actors (e.g. Corbett) play remarkably well and command the screen with their presence, even though they are not on for much time.

This is a very good film, notwithstanding Arriaga’s directorial debut and his somewhat brusque and sometimes formulaic devices in terms of plot and direction. The film deserves my recommendation and one can watch it with interest and be touched by the broken lives it depicts. It is a realistic drama that has strength and poignancy. The psychological baggage the characters carry with them many viewers will identify with, to an extent, and the story is interesting enough to satisfy the even the most seasoned cinephile.

LIBERTANGO

“Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, Dance, Dance till you drop.” - W.H. Auden

Another difficult and busy week is over and thankfully the weekend is here. A lovely night tonight with candlelight, lovely food and music and then a warm embrace. What else could sum it all up except Astor Piazzola’s “Libertango”?