The Mosaic donated by Momi Restaurant in Blevio

Presentation of the work:

In September 1837, Franz Liszt, deeply attached to the shores of Lake Como, wrote:

”When you write a love story between two happy lovers, set it on the shores of Lake Como...”

This sentence is the one, among perhaps the many best-known about Lake Como, that together with research and readings done over time, brought to mind a creature, a regular presence in this perfect environment, which I also find beautiful because of her innate and unconscious sense of romance.

A creature that, from reading a beautiful narrative description in the original language by an English ornithologist, had already once suggested to me something first fixed in the title, of obvious Shakespearean inspiration, which I eventually chose to keep and give to this work in the language in which it originated.

The subject of the work is the Great Crested Grebe, a familiar presence in lakes in many countries around the world, including Lake Como.

It is not a showy animal. It is petite, and it does not sport gaudy colours. Yet, it possesses a particular elegance, discreet, essential, made up of the refinement of its build and the few but harmonious colours, black, grey, and red, that characterise its livery.

His name does not evoke anything particularly suggestive. In almost all languages, it recalls his ability as a diver and discreet freediver or the crest that characterises its head during the mating season. However, being an explorer of the depths from the first days of life, little ones skilfully dive a few hours after birth. Some cultures point to him as a daring spirit, reflective, capable of going beyond the surface, knowing and finding beauty even in the ordinary.

Their contemplative aspect, if we can call it like that, also manifests itself when in the days of late winter, these animals give rise to their gentle ritual of mutual exploration and acquaintance in calm waters of lakes, a gentle courtship made up of gestures, attention, small gifts, even squabbles and rapprochements, as in the unintentional telling of the unfolding of an entire love story in all its facets.

Nature often has much to teach, so I always present it in my work. Reading those words of Liszt, Lake Como also becomes the scene of this beautiful ritual made of patience, correlation, and communication, things we humans also, precisely by our defining ourselves as such, should be much more capable of.