8:30
Breakfast… Italian cakes, granola, yoghurt, fresh fruit…
9:00-10:30
Italian 1 and 2
Latin Seminar
10:30-11:00
Merenda (snack), favorites include peach tea
and Italian animal cookies
11:00-1:00
Italian Renaissance, Age of Experimentation
Greek Seminar
Students also do their 1/2-hour chores in the morning
(making dog pasta, gardening, sweeping, etc.).
1:00-2:30
Lunch (Italian primo, secondo & dolce o frutta)
2:30-3:30
Where we are: translation & trip prep (days we go on trips)
4:00-7:30
Study-trip or afternoon activities
8:00
Dinner (primo o secondo, salad and/or vegetables every night from the Humanities Spring garden, dolce sempre!)

EVENINGS

Puppet shows, operas, medieval bell festivals, concerts, classical and jazz. Once or twice a week, we attend summer performances, indoors and out, all together. HSIA staff and students usually meet up before events to discuss musical motifs, complicated opera plots, historical context, etc. – or just to read program notes (in Italian!) in a square or ice-cream café.

Serate: One evening a week (usually Fridays), we all get together to eat spectacular Italian cakes (students take turns choosing them at the local bakery) and read HSIA-related texts aloud (anything from a Plautus comedy to passages from E.M. Forster’s comical description of audience participation at an opera in Where Angels Fear to Tread) or watch Italian films and then discuss them. Past favorites have included Passolini’s Decameron, (in Italian with English subtitles), A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and A Room with A View. Other evenings, students go into Assisi for open air concerts, improvised or scheduled, for ice creams, and for the gentle hum of piazza life, or stay at home to do homework, stargaze, go for long walks, and just talk.

THE SPOLETO FESTIVAL

Spoleto, a beautiful hill town 25 miles from Assisi, hosts the famous Festival of Two Worlds every summer – contemporary art exhibitions, film festivals, yellow umbrellas, opera, ballet, ice cream, fountains, piazzas… and more! Students usually attend at least two events, an opera or ballet and a wonderful traditional Italian marionette show, with four and a half foot high puppets hand-made by the famous Carlo Carla company.

Some favorite events attended by Humanities-Springers at the Festival

SEMELE
A Secular Oratorio in Three Acts by W. Congreve (in opera form, Music by G.F. Handel
Conductor: Rinaldo Alessandrini
Spoleto Festival Orchestra
Spoleto Festival Choir
Teatro Caio Melisso
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Inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the allegorical story of Zeus’ love for a mortal woman, Semele, develops like a regular opera in Handel’s secular oratorio. This production finds an ideal setting in the intimate surroundings of the Cairo Melisso Theatre.

BALLET DE NANCY ET DE LORRAINE
Artistic director: Pierre Lacotte
Teatro Romano
___________
The programme includles “Symphonie en D.“, Jiri Kylian’s funniest choreography, on music by Haydn; the grand, daring “Untitled” by the celebrated “Pillobolus” ensemble, centred on the American pioneer world, on music by R. Dennis; Pierre Lacotte’s elegant “Te Deum” on music by Bizet; and a novelty for Italy, P. Werlock’s “Stelt“, on Israeli folk music.

PETRUSHKA/SHEHERAZADE
Carlo Colla & Sons’ Marionette Company
Director: Eugenio Monti Colla
Sana Maria della Piaggia
___________
An accurate reproposal of the two famous ballets created for the Ballets Russes and danced by the great Nijinsky. “Petrushka“, choreographed by Fokine on music by Stravinsky, is based on a marionette’s love for a ballerina, while “Sheherazade“, on Rimsky-Korsakov’s exciting suite, tells a story full of unexpected developments, centred on Simbad the Sailor.