"Shallow Graves"

(The last known photo of Mia, rehearsing "Malocchio del Amore"
Photo courtesy of Maxine Culpa.)

Mia died in Rosarno, the result of an abortion gone bad. Mia’s father, Bishop Bassanni forced himself on her one night, with pregnancy as a result. Because of the Church’s opposition to abortion, and the bishop’s refusal to give her money to travel to Greece, she went to the local “dentist” for the operation. She contracted an infection that attacked vital organs. She did not tell Felix this until just days before her death. She is buried in Rosarno under a false name. This became one more bitter outrage that Felix held against the authorities, who shortly after Mia’s death, arrested him and tried him for inciting a riot, public indecency, and slander of church and civic authorities in the “Malocchio di Amore” affair.
With the assistance of women of the village, Felix escaped from the jail house the night before the verdict was to be handed down. He confronted the bishop in his Pallazzo, and in a fit of revenge cut off the Bassanni’s ring finger. The finger, still wearing the bishop’s ring, was found nailed to the door of the “dentist” office with the inscription “Malocchio del Mia” above it. After spending the night with Maxine, Felix left for Naples, where he was able to stow away on a liner bound for the States.

"Malocchio del Amore"

The animosity between the church and civic leaders on the one side and Culpa and the New Sybarites on the other reached its climax with the premiere performance of Felix’s Magnum Opus, “Malocchio di Amore.” This long Music Drama/Pageant was Culpa’s last attempt to stem the tide of censorship and the imposition of asceticism on his people. It was a call to the people to remember their luxurious and licentious past.

We know from Maxine and some who now admit they were there, that one section was literally a litany of the sins of prominent people in the area. Since Maxine was the bishop’s mistress, and Mia his daughter, the litany was no doubt long and painfully accurate. Maxine choreographed several of the dances, which she performed with Mia and other priestesses of Sybian. This public display proved to be the final provocation for the Neo-Fascists and Church who were attempting to maintain control of area villages. Towards the finale, “Triumph of the Moon,” the Poliza di Stato moved into the piazza to disperse the audience by force.

None of the music of “Malocchio di Amore” survives,(although it’s possible “Act II, Scenes 1 and 3” might be early sketches.) It was burned by the Carabinieri after the performance, along with many of the instruments, including some valuable string instruments. The musicians, actors and dancers escaped severe punishment only by signing an “agreement of cooperative silence,” and members of the audience quickly evaluated the political climate and denied ever being there. Those people whose children and animals were part of the “Peaceable Kingdom” section were excommunicated and their lands seized.

Mia and Maxine escaped and hid at Gioia del Colle, in the very grotto where, years before, St. Sybian sang her songs to a young Felix, initiating him into the world of heavenly pleasures and voluptuous music.

Since it was Felix’s position that the hand of God could be moved by sensuous ritual, and that this was taught to him directly by St. Sybian, the Catholic Church further condemned him. He lived the next few months on the run, hidden by the women of the mountain villages, until his arrest outside the village of Rosarno.

Teaching and Philosophy of St. Sybian

Sybian had little patience with theologies that sought to put a chasm between humanity and divinity. “All that separates the past from the present and the life –to-come, is a thin membrane, easily permeated. Earthly pleasures merely reflect heavenly delights.”
Asceticism and its infliction on others only drives a rift between the spiritual and the earthly. Voluptuaries are, in many ways, the opposite of masochists who believe that self-inflicted pain opens the gates to heaven, but the voluptuaries don’t have to work so hard at it. They welcome the many temptations that come their way.(The Latin root, Temptare, means to taste, to feel, or to test, as in testing the waters.) So life becomes a taste test of sorts-----not an affront to a ruler/judge, but an affirmation of a loving father. “One treats pleasures the way one would treat a gift from a valued friend, with respect and enthusiasm. To pass up that gift because of someone else’s judgment would be very rude, indeed.”

The Destruction of Sybaris:Defeat Dances to the Melodies of Decadence

Sybaris was attacked by neighboring Croton in 510 B.C.According to Athanaeus, the Sybarites had even trained their horses to dance at their feasts to the accompaniment
of pipes (similar to today's "Lippizan Stallions".) The people of Croton knew this when they made war on the Sybarites. "As the cavalries opposed each other on the field, Croton's musicians began to play the horse-marching music, whose tune was revealed by a Sybarite flute player seeking revenge for some insult. When the horses heard the pipers, they went into their ceremonial march and became useless for battle, dancing with their riders to the side of Croton. The Crotoniats with very inferior forces were completely victorious. They razed Sybaris to the ground and turned the waters of the Krathis River* to flow over its ruins."
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*named after Krathis, a young goatherd who "under an impulse lay with the prettiest of his goats." From this union a baby was born with the legs of a goat and the face of a human, who was deified and worshipped as a god [a PAN.] The goatherd was rammed in the fore-part of his skull as he slept by the he-goat leader of the flock and was killed.

The Seemingly Never-Ending Adolescence of Felix Culpa

Uncle Milo had taught Felix a couple things on the accordian and they spent most of the summer playing for weddings and festivals. Ah, the Weddings! The brides and attendants,so ripe, rosy and ready! The grooms, so pale and pensive. On the day after St. Sybian's Feastday, the weddings were non-stop from dawn to midnight. In the area of Castro, there is the ROMANELLI GROTTO which has frescoes detailing a sexual symbology. Several mid-summer evenings, Felix ended up at the grotto with one of the bridal attendants(one time, a bride's mother, if Felix is to believed) after playing and singing at weddings in the village.


For Felix, sexual education came complete with charts.

Vita Volupta

Purity was not Sybian’s strong suit, unless it was purity of intention: to enjoy the earthly delights God had gifted to his people not out of any reward or entitlement, but simply, as she put it, “out of Papa’s love and will.” Even as a young girl growing up in Scilla, more than a millennium after the luxurious, glorious settlement of Sybaris was laid to waste, Sybian developed a reputation as a visionary and a voluptuary. It was said she could squeeze the last ounce of enjoyment out of any situation and her dancing and singing in praise of life were legendary. The visions which came to her at the apex of sexual ecstasy and elation induced by alcohol and herbs, she related to the young who congregated in her garden.
Even though this was during an era when women were still allowed somewhat equal status in the Christian Church, she made many of the church leaders nervous and jealous, especially those who had failed as her lovers.



Her lovers became her unofficial priests and priestesses,though she had no time or interest in adulation; there were many fruits to taste. It was only when the Romans, at the bequest of rival colonies who felt the Sybarites were not contributing enough to the area economy, dammed up the Krathis River and ruined the marvelous gardens and bergamot groves of Sybaris, that she felt called by God to lead the people.

Felix Culpa

Felix Sebastian Culpa was born and raised in Calabria, in Southern Italy, near the site of the ancient Greek city of Sybaris, once famous as a center for luxurious tastes ( today, “sybarite” refers to someone with an addiction to luxury.) His senses-ravaging adolescence which he recounted, but never recanted, was the inspiration for many of his melodies and poems. He often returned to those memories, even though he was forbidden to return to the land of their origin. His sketches for brass ensemble, “The Ecstasies of Sybian” , for example, invoke memories of a summer mid-day* when, on the feast of St. Sybian, the village band would play before mass on the steps of the church (officially called “Holy Innocents”, since St. Sybian was the “people’s patron” and not recognized by the Vatican. Felix was its organist during his teens.) Her feast day, celebrated on the summer solstice, was a day of great sensuousness and pleasure seeking.** Much of Culpa’s music, spiritual and secular, was written in the saint’s honor and, he believed, at her direction. To Felix Culpa, music was the most delicious and voluptuous of all the arts, and heaven and earth were wedded.
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*In the tradition of Sybaris, where there was a “noise ordinance” barring even roosters so everyone could sleep undisturbed, the “day” did not really begin until afternoon.
* * The law in Sybaris before the Neo-Roman Catholic-Fascist reforms was that all marriages lasted one year, beginning on the day after St. Sybian’s Feast, and ending the next year on the eve of the feast. Thus on St. Sybian’s feast day no one was married. Troths could be renewed or not without any stigma. At the time of Felix’s youth this was still the practice, if not the law. Thus, it’s futile to attempt to track Culpa’s marriage record. At times, he was married to Mia and at other times to myself; sometimes, it would appear, to both of us, and most likely to others.

Some History of Sybaris

Sybaris was a Greek settlement, part of the Magna Graecia, on the gulf of Taranto,(the
the“toe area’ of Italy), founded about 720 BC. At the time, the region was very fertile and the city became large and wealthy. For magnificence and luxury, the Sybarites were proverbial throughout Greece.

FOR EXAMPLE:

The sybarites in their pursuit of all pleasures, made a law that if any confectioner or cook invented any peculiar and excellent dish, no other artist was allowed to make the same dish for a year. But he alone who invented it was entitled to all the profits to be derived from that manufacture of it for that time “that others might be encouraged to labor at excelling in such pursuits.”[thus the concept of “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY”]

The sybarites were the first to enact “noise ordinances”, forbidding noise-producing crafts from being established within the city, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, and the like, their objects being to have their sleep undisturbed in any way; it was not permitted even to keep a rooster inside the city.

They also devised a system that piped wine into their houses…

The Grotto

The grotto, “il Bucco Glorioso”, at Gioia del Colle, is hard to locate even if you have been there before. It’s never how you remember it.
Sometimes the fragrance of the bergamot orange, so unique it is used in the finest teas and perfumes, leads one directly to the entrance. Other times, the winds shift and only the musty smell of sea salt laces the air.

When Felix was thirteen and working for his Uncle Milo in the bergamot orange industry, as he was fetching a half keg of the essence from the cave, Sybian made the first of her apparitions. This began her initiation of Felix: slowly, gently singing songs with strange melodies and swaying to an intoxicating syncopation, she revealed to him the door to the VIA VOLUPTA. Then taking him in her arms, she led him across the threshold. He described it later as every part of his young body waking up. But along with his body, his soul was waking up, and it was his soul that was the reservoir of the melody and movement that became a gift to his people and a bane to those in authority who sought to rob the people of their con brio roots.

Mia and I used the grotto as a hideaway for two months after the “MALOCCIO del AMORE” pageant/police riot.

"The People's Saint"

The People's Altars in Sybaris, Calabria. Sybian is a "Sancta Populi", a "people's saint", unrecognized, indeed disowned, by the Vatican. But inside many of the sybarite homes are altars erected in her honor. On these altars are placed the tastiest pastries, richest wines, and perfumes made from the the local bergamot orange. The ester of this bitter orange is referred to as the "Scent of the Saint," and is considered a strong balm for heartaches as well as headaches.

Ecstasy

"His Love is deep within me.
My heart, my soul, my being,
They resonate as one single tone in my breasts.
His words are golden arrows,
Love's golden shafts of purest light.
I know not rest.
I am his new creation.
He calls me forth to be his bride.

Warm as the glowing sun,
Bright as a thousand stars,
I give you back the love I owe.
I hear the beauty of your song to me.
I feel the power of your call to me
And in response my soul screams out, "AMEN!"

"The Ecstasies of Sybian"
by F. S. Culpa

"Exstase"

"Good Night, my love, with whom I rest in all my dreams.
A vague enormous room appears, and from all time,
and for all time, we are free."
------Felix Sebastian Culpa
"The Mausoleum at Rosarno"