Sunday, April 23, 2006

"The Stonecutter's Aria" Another Italian-American Returns to Italy for Self Discovery

The ANNOTICO Report

 

If we know Not from Whence we came, How can we know Who we Are????

 

Carol Faenzi's grandparents died in 1996, four months apart. At the time, she was ill and weary, after years of keeping pace with the corporate world. The success of the office real-estate business she started here in the mid-1980s eventually took her to Manhattan, but it also wore her down.

 

That set in motion the wheels of self-discovery for Faenzi, who traveled by herself -- on a one-way ticket -- to Italy.

 

"The Stonecutter's Aria," published in 2005, is a tribute to Italian-Americans in the Midwest and to her family.

 

 

WOMAN HONORS FAMILY'S JOURNEY

 

Indianapolis Star 

Ruth Holladay

April 23, 2006

 

Carol Faenzi infused the room with light, literally, when she addressed The Propylaeum Club luncheon last week.

 

In a brief slide show, she presented numerous bright images of sun-struck Northern Italy and the village of Carrara, her ancestral home.

 

The mountains there glitter with what she calls "white gold" -- marble. Even the stone's dust is precious, she told her audience of 60 on Wednesday. "It looks and feels like stardust," said Faenzi, 52, an Indianapolis native.

 

How a sophisticated Manhattanite career woman unearthed within herself a fascination for the gritty labor of stone quarrying and the art of sculpting in Italy and Southern Indiana 100 years ago is quite a story.

 

Faenzi tells it in "The Stonecutter's Aria," published in 2005, a tribute to Italian-Americans in the Midwest and to her family.

"She puts flesh on a lot of generalizations about immigrants," said James Divita, a historian and president of the Italian-American Society in Indianapolis.

 

Italians came to the United States looking for a better life, escaping an Italy that "wasn't working as a country," Divita said.

Presented in three acts like the opera so beloved by her great-grandfather, Faenzi's book traces the journeys of her forebears.

 

Her great-grandfather came to Indiana to work in Bedford's limestone quarries. He settled his family in Indianapolis, close to Holy Rosary Catholic Church Downtown. Faenzi's relatives are still there.

 

Dearest to her were her grandparents, the late Olga and Otto Faenzi. He was chef at the Columbia Club for 35 years. Faenzi spent many happy hours in their Irvington home, enjoying Northern Italian meals, admiring her grandmother's treasures, inhaling the aroma from the cigars the men smoked.

 

Her grandparents died in 1996, four months apart. That set in motion the wheels of self-discovery for Faenzi, who traveled by herself -- on a one-way ticket -- to Italy.

 

At the time, she was ill and weary, after years of keeping pace with the corporate world. The success of the office real-estate business she started here in the mid-1980s eventually took her to Manhattan, but it also wore her down.

 

Besides that, Faenzi had an identity crisis. Although most of her family is Catholic, she was raised by her parents as a Jehovah's Witness. That church was not a good fit for Faenzi.

 

Still, leaving the Witnesses as a young woman was emotionally painful and created a rift between herself and her parents. Her grandmother was the bridge between the generations -- a wise woman who became the muse for Faenzi's journey home.

 

 

The ANNOTICO Reports are Archived at:

Italy at St Louis: www.italystl.com

Italia Mia: www.italiamia.com (Community)