The Mercato di Ortigia, in Siracusa, is Sicily out loud. The same stalls, the same names, the same gestures passed down one generation at a time. Angelo’s. The Cappuccio brothers’. When I came close enough to raise the camera, he was singing. At the top of his lungs. Here fish is not sold in silence. It is sold by vanniata: the fishmonger sings his catch, the price, and a rhyme he invents that morning, in dialect, each man with his own melody. The oldest opera in Sicily, and it opens at dawn. A manifesto for the joy of being alive.
The Mercato di Ortigia, in Siracusa, is Sicily out loud. The same stalls, the same names, the same gestures passed down one generation at a time. Angelo’s. The Cappuccio brothers’. When I came close enough to raise the camera, he was singing. At the top of his lungs. Here fish is not sold in silence. It is sold by vanniata: the fishmonger sings his catch, the price, and a rhyme he invents that morning, in dialect, each man with his own melody. The oldest opera in Sicily, and it opens at dawn. A manifesto for the joy of being alive.
