 "Photo: Hannah Carroll <i> Assistant Photo Editor</i>")
Carmella Roche spent most of Saturday working behind a Gelato counter, but made sure to take a little time off from scooping the dessert to dance Tarantella.
“No version of the dance is the same,” said Roche, one of the general managers of Columbia’s Villa Tronco restaurant.
Roche, a fourth-generation Italian, wasn’t the only one doing the Tarantella Saturday. Full-blooded Italians-for-the-day danced the Italian folk dance as part of the second-annual Italian Festival and Bocce tournament in Finlay Park. Aside from dancing, the festival was a day of musical performance, authentic Italian food and culture and featured everything from Maseratis to Gondolas. Columbia’s Sons of Italy Lodge sponsored the festival.
Roche, the co-chair of the festival and vice president of Sons of Italy, couldn’t have been more pleased with the day’s events.
“It’s been great,” Roche said. “We’re so thankful people came out and that its been so successful.”
The Italian Festival covered the greater part of Finlay Park and featured the usual assortment of festival tents and stages. At the center sat the biggest tent, underneath the canopy — authentic Italian food made from scratch from Villa Tronco. Roche said that food is one of the most important things for Italian culture.
“Food and family are everything to an Italian,” Roche said.
Villa Tronco has been serving Italian food for Columbia’s residents for four generations, but had probably never served as many people as it did at the Festival Saturday. Head Chef Tom Sedio said that cooks from the restaurant rolled 18,000 meatballs, baked 50 trays of lasagna and made 1,200 cannolis in preparation for the event.
“All of our food was made from scratch,” Sedio said. “Nobody cooks festival food more authentic than that.”
The food wasn’t the only authentic cuisine offered at the festival. Wine vendors sold Chianti and pinot grigio, two Italian wines. Janet Hayden, one of the vendors, said that much like food, wine is essential to Italians.
“Wine and food for Italians is a marriage,” said Hayden, who was quick to point out that she wasn’t Italian. “It’s good for you.”
Music was another large part of the festival. People at the festival’s lot could hear traditional music from the grandstand, and people gathered to hear the sounds of performers in the latter part of the day. Dick Goodwin of the Dick Goodwin Quintet was one of those performers there. He said that Italians have a rich musical tradition.
“A lot of Italian-American performers brought great music to America,” said Goodwin, a former professor at the USC School of Music. “There is a great musical tradition out of Italy.”
The Dick Goodwin Quintet played the melodies of several Italian and American standards made famous by the likes of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, both Italians, and featured the voices of Anna Dragoni and Shawn Logan, after a quick rehearsal on a parking lot curb just behind the grand stand.
Other attractions included an Italian food market, featuring Italian ingredients not found stateside; a showcase of Italian supercars with price tags well into six figures; a gondola; Renaissance-style fencing; and Bocce, a game dating back to the Roman Empire. Thirty-two two-person teams competed in the Bocce tournament for a cash prize. Mike Rescigno, a co-treasure of Sons of Italy, said the tournament was one of his favorite events.
“Me and my son got knocked out in the first round, but we enjoyed it,” he said.
Roche said that after all the games have been played, the last notes are played and the massive amounts of food have been eaten, she hoped visitors would take the culture with them, and that she was proud of her heritage.
“I’m so glad I’m Italian,” she said.
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