One million people will flock to the city in the weeks before Fat Tuesday, on March 8, to take in an array of concerts, plays, parades and 18th-century costumes. Iconic  Masks were essential to the function of the original Venetian Carnival. From the 11th century the Carnival  provided a safety valve for social tensions by letting people of all classes gamble, sing, dance and otherwise divert themselves together in faceless anonymity. 
 
These masks evoke the theatrical genre of commedia dell'arte, that  trace their origins to Ancient Roman theater. There can be no confusing this event with the notorious bacchanals of Rio and New Orleans because Italians are moderate and measured drinkers, and children are an integral part of the Venice celebration. 

Venice launches its annual Carnival tomorrow with a "grand toast," followed by music and dancing in St. Mark's Square. If past years are any guide, as many as one million people will flock to the city in the weeks before Fat Tuesday, on March 8, to take in an array of concerts, plays, parades and 18th-century costumes.

There can be no confusing this event with the notorious bacchanals of Rio and New Orleans. One reason is that late winter in the northern Adriatic doesn't lend itself to public nudity. And even in the relatively bibulous northeast, where a glass of wine at breakfast isn't rare, Italians are moderate and measured drinkers. Still, the Venetian Carnival offers its restrained charms, such as the sight of little children, dressed as Spider-Man or Cinderella or whatever this year's fashion is, watching raptly as a previously unidentified celebrity (usually a show-business figure or athlete) descends on a wire from the top of St. Mark's Bell Tower into the crowd below. 

Then, of course, there are the masks. Most iconic is the mouthless bauta, typically worn with a three-cornered hat and black cloak, which turns every wearer into an impersonator of Casanova. At least as famous is the full-face, oval volto, eerily sexy in its smoothness and impassivity. The "plague doctor," with its long curved beak and historical association with deadly epidemic, disturbingly suggests the nightmarish grotesques of Hieronymus Bosch.

Masks were essential to the function of the original Venetian Carnival. From the 11th century until the late 18th (when the event was banned as subversive by the conquering Napoleon, not to be revived until 1979), the "Most Serene Republic" provided a safety valve for social tensions by letting people of all classes gamble, sing, dance and otherwise divert themselves together in faceless anonymity. That element of class mixing has vanished, ironically enough, in our more democratic age. While the chosen few attend glittering balls in palaces along the Grand Canal, the reality of Carnival for most is a long wait in line for an overpriced hot chocolate. 

Yet the Carnival mask endures as the instantly recognizable emblem of Venice's pre-Lenten celebration. In several ways, the mask can also serve as an emblem of Italian life. For one thing, there is the sheer quality of the finest specimens. Although Venetian gift shops now abound in kitschy, mass-produced versions, local workshops continue to turn out exquisite masks in papier-m?ch? or leather, exemplifying Italy's proud and resilient tradition of craftsmanship. These masks evoke the theatrical genre of commedia dell'arte, which the Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni brought to its artistic apogee in the 18th century. Its set of farcical stock characters, such as the violent trickster Pulcinella, the avaricious Pantalone and the hyperbolic, obsessed young lovers, trace their origins to Ancient Roman theater. You can easily meet their descendants today among the ordinary citizens of this histrionic nation.

The Carnival mask is a fitting symbol for Italian society, in that it facilitates mingling by permitting the wearer to conceal himself. Italians are an instinctively gregarious people, tending to cluster even when they have room to spread out, but they aren't easily convivial. With anyone outside of their clan or close social network, their usual attitude is one of circumspection, or actual suspicion, though veiled by pleasant or, at least, elegant manners.

As demonstrated most spectacularly by Venice itself?whose watery foundation was originally a defense against barbarian invaders, with results that we experience as a storybook marvel. Italians have always had a gift for turning evasion into art.

Love is in the air
Tomorrow marks the conclusion of another representative Italian celebration, credited with inspiring the Eurovision Song Contest, among other distinctions. For 60 years, the annual Sanremo Music Festival has been a showcase for emerging pop singers and new (if not exactly original) love songs destined to ring in every Italian's head for months, and sometimes decades. Once again this year, the show has been hosted by a superannuated male entertainer accompanied by a pair of much younger, voluptuous women?long the standard combination on Italian television, though only recently on the country's political scene....

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