On Sunday I made my savory fig tart for a Spanish-themed picnic at Stern Grove (Italian opera, and stories from friends just back from Lucca and Puccini’s villa). Carmelized onions, goat cheese and mozzarella, crumbled bacon, fragrant fresh rosemary and thyme, and ripe purple figs halved and drizzled with Lisbon Lemon olive oil, in a healthy whole wheat pie crust.
Perfect accompanied by a lovely tortilla, potato omelette, along with charred and lightly salted pimientos de padron, mixed olives, Serano ham, and assorted Spanish cheeses— Manchego, Naked Goat, and young Mahon (from Mahón, the capital of the Balearic island of Minorca, smaller and flatter than Mallorca, and the source as well of salsa mahonesa, known to us as mayonnaise . . . )
The arias were all Italian, to welcome the arrival of the wonderful Nicola Luisotti to the San Francisco Opera— what a treat for a Sunday in a grove of temple-solemn redwoods, eucalyptus, and fir.
I especially love that the new conductor's grandfather went duck hunting with Puccini, and that Puccini came to his village to listen to the bells, which made their way into Tosca; and I love his insistence on beauty.
One of the arias we heard was one I find most beautiful in all the Italian repertoire, "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana," from the almost unknown opera by Catalani, La Wally. Here is what's perhaps my favorite recorded version, sung (as it was when I first heard it in 1981, in the film Diva) by Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez. I can listen over and over and over.
images: figs from http://www.eyeonspain.com/spain-magazine/Images/figs.jpg
Tuscan platter from Montelupo, Italy, via The Pottery Co. www.thepotteryco.com
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