Festa del Redentore

This year I was extremely fortunate to be in Venice for the Festa del Redentore, a spectacular festival held every year on the third Saturday of July. The celebration gives thanks to the end of the plague in 1576 which devastated Venice. Since then, every year Venetians celebrate with food, wine and an amazing fireworks show before midnight to juxtapose the brutality of death which killed over 50,000 during the Black Plague. The following Sunday, one can make a pilgrimage and cross the bridge leading from Giudecca, where the church called Il Redentore is located, to the city of Venice.

This year over 120,000 people came to Venice to celebrate and experience the grandeur of the Festa del Redentore. Our group had to arrive four hours in advance to make sure we all had somewhere on the ground to sit! The fireworks lasted for 45 minutes and left me struck with utter amazement. Professor Vitti-Alexander warned us before the fireworks, and even during the prior semester when we were getting ready for the program, that the Festa del Redentore is completely unforgettable. All the boats jammed in the harbor and were filled with Italians partying, dancing, eating and singing. Yellow Chinese lanterns hung from light poles and draped over the sidewalks like stringed popcorn on a Christmas tree. They glowed brighter and brighter as the sun disappeared and the sky darkened into a template of periwinkle. After hours of partying, spilled vino and complaints of sore butts from the uneven and rocky sidewalk, the lanterns shut off. With this warning, the Venetian party goers cheered briefly and then nestled into their boat cushions, snuggled close together with blankets and took off their Italian designer high heels to truly relax and enjoy the show. All music which had been blasting from stereo systems and competing with one another for the past few hours turned off completely. At last, the fireworks began.

We all shuffled closer to one another, clapped, screamed and crinked our necks upward at ungodly angles when the first firework rocked into the sky. Venice played back drop to the show while fireworks performed for an anxious audience sitting half on water, half on land. Shimmering particles fell from the sky like leaves falling from trees in autumn. They landed onto the water silently, and gave their last bows before dying out. Staring above me everything seemed to glow as if the entire sky had been decorated with glow-in-the-dark paint. The water mirrored every movement, color and sparkle. Contrasting with the visual serenity, I felt as if I was inside of a drum getting pounded on from the outside because the sky roared and echoed with such force that the earth seemed to shake. Even despite my strong and unmoving stance, I felt a complete lack of sturdiness. My body shook and my eyes raced at rapid speeds in hopes to keep up with all of the patterns and colors zooming across the sky. However, it was not the fireworks themselves that astounded me, but rather the entire scene. The beauty of the moment, the cheers from the spectators, and the energy surrounding me felt electric.

Those pauses between firework sequences began with a grand number of booms and bursts of neon colors and ended with complete nothingness. The sky turned black as the pastel colored clouds faded to gray. The cries of the fireworks would too fade, and this is what captured me the most. Everything turned silent and I felt this eerie awe of amazement, completion, and anticipation for more. During the finale, the crowd tried to match the deafening noises shooting from the sky with their screams of excitement. Fireworks exploded everywhere and fooled all 120,000 of us watching with necks crinked and eyes wide. During the last two minutes the sky glistened as millions of diamonds spilled from the clouds and trinkled on top of the water with the epitome of grace and splendor.