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By Jon Mooallem
Photographs and video through Andrea Frazzetta
It was as if a war was coming. On a Sunday last month, in a northern Italian town called Ivrea, the facades of historic buildings were covered with plastic sheets and netting. The windows of the tents were reinforced with plywood and tarpaulins. And in several other places, loads of wooden boxes appeared. , whose walls were stacked 8 feet high and even higher. The boxes looked like barricades but they were weapons depots. Inside, there were oranges. Oranges, the fruit.
Over the next 3 days, another 8000 people in Ivrea threw 900 tons of oranges, one orange at a time, versus tens of thousands more. They threw the oranges very loudly, very viciously, shouting profanity at their targets or shouting like Braveheart. , and threw away the oranges for hours, until their eyebrows were glued with pulp and their shirts soaked. Deranged but euphoric sense of abandonment and belonging, a freedom that was simple to envy but difficult to understand.
The Battle of the Oranges is an annual culture in Ivrea and is part of a larger birthday component described by its organizers as “the oldest Carnival in Italy. “Three years ago, things started the way they do, with a few hours of pitching and splashing, but then the rest of the war was abruptly canceled. Covid had emerged in the area, and after an emergency meeting of government officials this afternoon, a resolution was made to close the festival. Several other people in Ivrea told me that since two more years of pandemic passed in which oranges cannot be thrown, it was feared that something bad would happen in the network, that without that catharsis some repressed and sinister power would explode. But it didn’t. They had succeeded. And now the smell of the culmination of stored citrus was combined with the musk of centuries-old masonry. The arancieri, or orange throwers, were waiting.
The Ivrea arancieri are organized into nine teams, each with a different flag, logo, captain and uniform. They have names like Devils, Mercenaries, Black Panthers, Death. As early as 2 p. m. As they approached, the arancieri would huddle elbow to elbow in their assigned posts, each waiting to wage war with 47 brigades of other orange shooters who would come roaming the town in horse-drawn carts. Many had been partying until 2 or 3 in the morning the night before, and many were also drinking that morning; The city was awash with disposable cups of mulled wine and Euphonium, an alcoholic concoction of eggnog, served hot. They were most commonly men, especially young men, there were also many women. There were also other elderly people who had participated in the Battle of the Oranges since they were the age of those young people. Some had taken these other young men to their first wars in buggies, twenty years ago. (A woman proudly showed me a photo. ) In a community known as Borghetto, a team called the Tuchini to whip up bowls of compostable pasta in their small piazza, waiting in their green puff-sleeved T-shirts with lace-up fronts. Above their heads hung a banner: “In the heat of war, we are never alone.
This is what happened next: The Borghetto environment contracted like a fist. Around the corner, the first car pulled up, crossing the cobblestone bridge that connects the community to the rest of the city; you may only hear the dull rumble of their wheels on the stone, the bells on the horses’ bridles tinkling madly. As soon as the car appeared, shooting and screaming began simultaneously. A giant component of the crowd rushed to their flanks. Inside the car, there were a dozen people dressed as medieval soldiers, their heads and faces disguised in lurid, braid-trimmed leather helmets, already mercilessly cocking oranges with both hands, their thick forearms pumping like pistons, their empty fists filling troughs. . on their waists as the opposing fists unloaded. They hurled oranges in a kind of ballet flow, the brutal apparatus of their torsos turning successfully but harshly. They launched straight down, punishing other people just two feet below, who, in turn, vomited relentlessly. Oranges scattered through the air omnidirectionally like sawdust, like sparks.
The car absolutely stopped in the middle of the square. The war reached a higher intensity. Oranges splashed on the soldiers’ heads and rolled on their leafy backs. (The scene is so chaotic that once, ten years ago, a launcher in one of the cars had a medium attack, but no one noticed his body had collapsed there until they saw him. )were given out of the car. ) When the car began to move again, leaving the square, the hardliners chased after him. They yelled at him through a foam of sputum and marrow. In the calm that followed, other people rushed to call. oranges on the floor that were intact enough to be revived. Then the next car arrived, and everything that had just happened happened again.
I had the opportunity to participate that first afternoon, even though I hadn’t won any commands or councils. Usually the arancieri have to register with a team weeks in advance and pay the fee of around 120 euros, however someone from the Ivrea Historical Carnival Foundation, which organizes the event, just presented me with a t-shirt of large Tuchini and wanted me luck. I took up position on the outskirts, occasionally lobbing long-range oranges, getting dizzy as my first hit a soldier’s helmet and liquefied dramatically. However, I did not realize that many other people were throwing oranges at cars from similar distances and from all directions. The conspirators in this circular firing squad stepped over the car or past the bodies on board and rushed directly at the other people on the opposite side: grabbing shoulders, forearms, temples, mouths. Seconds after the first skirmish, I took one of the sensible ones out of my head. A few minutes later, a woman crossed in front of me and yelled at her partner that she had been punched in the eye. I looked down to note this small moment in my notebook: a catastrophic mistake. I never saw the orange coming, and it hit exactly the worst place imaginable. Doubled over, staggering and moaning, gasping and panicking, I feared it was serious, even life-changing. I imagined having to explain the injury to a urologist or, worse yet, a reconstructive surgeon specializing in personal parts. It took several hours for my guts to pay off well.
From then on, I concentrated on spotting and dodging. Over the next 3 days, he would see arancieri with demonic face paint, frame paint, and one with a porthole scrawled on his bald head with the words “Throw it here. ” I watched a grown woman hide her much smaller and much older mother either laughing as the oranges fell, and a skinny, emotionless guy walked across a plaza as the next car approached with a car dashboard sign reading : “My dad is the first to arrive. ” the car. kill him.
I happened to observe other people rolling cigarettes a few feet from the crossfire. An organization of beaten-up youths marching arm in arm, drenched in juice, singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” in broken but exuberant English. I have witnessed several so-called “baptisms”, in which a beginner, or arancieri otherwise perceived as weak, kneels on the ground while a tight circle of his teammates lashes his face with overripe oranges. a few centimeters away. “Is it blood?” I heard a young man ask another, examining his left ear. “It’s blood orange,” the friend clarified. Though he would also see a lot of royal blood: scabs under the nostrils, reflecting sunlight off a dark, swollen lip. And each and every once in a while, whenever the crocks aboard the cars momentarily ran out of oranges, I saw them, one by one, raise their empty palms, remove their leather helmets, and do a magnificent gesture of applause for the arancieri on foot – who equally graciously returned their applause. There were things I found out about the Battle of the Oranges that were startling or made me regress. But I got each and every time: each and every throw and get thrown, running in combination for a good time.
That said, even a few minutes after Borghetto’s first skirmish, I can’t really believe how everyone can go through another 3 hours and then start over for two more days. The unbridled emotions, the outpouring of ferocity combined with joy, seemed insufferable, a once-in-a-lifetime career. In addition, the ground was already covered with an electric yellow mash. The juice flowed. The porridge froze. Soon there would be 3 to 4 inches along the squares of Ivrea from one end to the other, mounds and stripes all over the adjacent streets. School district, if oranges were snow. And when you put your foot on it, it burps up like a shaky marinara and splashes the ankles of your pants.
This curtain turned gray, then brown, in the evening air, while other cooler oranges continued to explode on the forehead, face, cheeks and breasts and landed. disorder. It looked precisely like vomiting. It was as if the people themselves had vomited. And somewhere there, surely, there was also a bag of horse manure, which, immobilized in the middle of the fight, you could see them poking their teeth and then shitting.
This was the dust that the street cleaning machines of Ivrea would face, 3 nights in a row. And the heroic brush trucks controlled to vacuum the big one, could not clean everything. They compressed the remains into the canals between the cobblestones and left a colorless foam covering the surface of the city. It was super smooth. Many other people, other delicate-looking older people, mothers with small children strapped to their breasts, walk conscientiously without complaint. Others escaped, turned to the side, and enjoyed the ride.
During the last moments of the battle, one afternoon, I saw a middle-aged man walking down a corner of the largest square in the city with a glass of red wine, a real glass. He had just taken a sip when, suddenly, his feet skated out and slammed into the side. He landed in the wrong direction; He didn’t see the car turning the corner and rushing towards him. A young man from the Arancieri death team, his black uniform soaked and his head covered by a tangle of brightly colored hair, jumped off the sidewalk, grabbed the fallen man by the arm, and dragged him off the trail of the horses at the last second.
The guy glided frictionlessly, flying like an air hockey puck. Finally, he stood up, tasted his glass, and found that it was full. He had controlled keeping it in the air all the time. There were almost no scratches on the sides.
But why?Why oranges?Why throw oranges?For what?
About 8 centuries ago, present-day Ivrea was ruled by a despot, the Marquis Ranieri di Biandrate. The Marquis was despicable, stingy and cruel. He kidnapped peasant women on their wedding nights and raped them. One night, however, according to a hodgepodge of history and legend, the daughter of a miller named Violetta controlled to fight him. Soon she gave the impression on the window of the tyrant’s castle. through the light of the fire, holding his decapitated head in one hand. A revolt broke out – instantly. Violetta’s defiance prompted the population to burn down the palace, freeing themselves to do whatever they wanted. And what they liked, apparently, was to throw oranges at both one and both years for 3 days straight.
A bit. I bypass 30 generations of local history as the culture became more complex and evolved, before taking its existing form in the years after World War II. Initially, in the Middle Ages, the population of Ivrea threw beans at each other. It wasn’t until the mid 1800s that they first used oranges as weapons, assimilating another local culture where women on balconies would throw oranges at children they liked. But whatever the food, the concept has been to commemorate the Ivrea uprising and celebrate the freedom it brought simultaneously; the burly warriors in the carriages replace the feudal army of the marquis, while the arancieri on foot, who chase them from one side of the squares to the other, constitute the unleashed population. At some point, the culture also merged with the classic celebration of Carnival, allowing for similar raucous debauchery and binge drinking in the days leading up to Lent. So, to summarize: it’s a live role-playing game. It’s an old recreation. It’s Mardi Gras at Colonial Williamsburg with head injuries and fruit.
In fact, the throwing of oranges is just the most striking ritual in a large number of auxiliary carnival traditions in Ivrea. The total program begins several weeks earlier, with a ceremonial parade in early January, then continues with one painstakingly prescribed rite after another, such as a gathering of 10 young people convened “on the Saturday before the penultimate Sunday before Carnival. “I struggled to keep up with the complexity of Dungeons
All this presided over by a gathering of characters selected at random from other eras of the history of Ivrea, who parade dressed in antique costumes. Every year, other high-ranking local personalities have the honor of playing a special role. These come with the general, who is awarded as a symbol of the city for the duration of the carnival through the existing mayor of Ivrea and the deputy grand chancellor, who records the good fortune of each select culture in a large and elegant book. (These dignitaries also help fund the festivities in exchange for their appointments, some of them handing out checks for up to €30,000. ) The undisputed star of carnival, however, is the Vezzosa Mugnaia, or the Daughter of the Enchanting Miller, an incarnation of Violetta, who sparked the initial revolt. Mugnaia spends much of the carnival touring the city in a golden float, dressed in a white dress and green belt, throwing overboard piles of chocolates and flowers into the crowd. Wherever he goes, the fight stops and a lot of people shout “Viva La Mugnaia” and lose their minds.
The identity of each year’s Mugnaia is kept secret until the eve of the first Battle of Orange. They shouted the call of Elena Bergamini as Bardus, and a black-haired woman gave the impression in an adjacent window, feverishly moving both arms from side to side. (In the greeting, it had a strange intensity. It looked like she was trying to keep a plane from heading recklessly toward the door. ) The crowd reveled. Her call would have been unfamiliar to most of those clapping in the square: Bergamini in Bardus is a former concert clarinetist and working mother of two. for a nearby municipality, but now she was his Mugnaia, and that was enough.
Finally, the Mugnaia surrendered in her carriage and left the square. Everyone marched towards her. Suddenly: a parade. There were the drummers and the pipes, shouting with their wooden flutes, and the general with his army insignia, his hand outstretched in a company salute, as if it were an oil portrait of himself. There were brigades of infantrymen with rifles and spears; Arancieri’s teams, dancing and singing under their banners; and waves of ordinary, exalted Ivreans and strangers, adding me, somewhere among the mess of bodies moving slightly backwards, to me. The speed of the procession was icy. Claustrophobia was intense. But I was the only one who seemed upset. I would have a hard time getting out of the parade and surrounding it, only to find myself stuck in the parade again.
It has become a topic. Parades of different sizes and complexities snaked through the streets of the Ivrea Carnival, and when I pushed myself to reach the end of a rite or hold various appointments in the city, I would get caught up or absorbed in them again. and even. The parades crossed my path perfectly. They blocked the road ahead. I once got stuck behind a parade and saw it suddenly turn and come straight towards me. It was a strange thing to stay down to a user in a celebration of freedom, but I could not circumvent the parades; They seemed to get bigger, longer, and slower every time I tried. On another occasion – I swear – a parade magically gave me the impression of regenerating and passing twice, as if the parade were a Moebius tape. One night I was having a delightful verbal exchange in the lobby of City Hall and I didn’t notice the uniformed and brass infantrymen cramming into the main staircase behind me, forming a parade, trapping me inside.
Soon I would choke on the sound of remote fifanos. Absurd, as a metaphor, as a Kafka tale: a humble employee of a workplace in a European village who, every time he leaves his apartment, is surrounded and hindered by ceremonial parades. Except, I couldn’t have been clearer, I’m not the protagonist. I swim. My autonomy and desires were subsumed through a culture that belonged and enjoyed through everyone.
Every morning during the Battle of the Oranges, new black eyes bloomed in the city. Before other eyes, massive cushions of purple flesh were erected. And others were bloodied where they should have been targeted.
According to several team leaders I spoke to, other people wanted to be bruised. In fact, you would periodically see arancieri gung-ho motionless in a car, with their faces raised towards the pitchers to invite a direct hit, like a guy confined internally for years, mesmerized by the heat of the sun. And among the patches of boys I saw sewn into other people’s swimsuits, there was one with the same number used to hint at genres on bathroom doors, raising an arm to protect his face. Line ran through the illustration: it was not allowed.
By the time the last orange was thrown, another 469 people were seeking medical attention from on-site paramedics, although looking around gives the impression that they were not necessarily the majority of the seriously injured, just those who they complained. And yet, what I hardly ever saw during the Battle of the Oranges was a public expression of grief. Just once: a child running into his mother’s arms, wailing, after being shot in the eye. (Note not only the pain of the effect, but also the sting of the juice. ) My theory was that Jubilo was a strong pain reliever. Everyone’s pain receptors have been short-circuited by pleasure. Even among those on the brink of battle, even among the bystanders, there was an impartial acceptance of the chaos that seemed unreal. There was the young woguy, suddenly struck by gusts of citrus, nonchalantly wiping his cheek in the middle of a conversation; the guy and the woguy cuddling tenderly with their backs to a car, their heads tucked into the crook of their necks; parents without worries for their children; young without caring for themselves.
Four days in Ivrea had not desensitized me to the unusual of it all. For me, it had no relationship, it was alienating. Even many Italians outside Ivrea find the Battle of the Oranges shameful or uncivilized. Every year there is criticism. There is fear for the welfare of the horses pulling the carriages, disgust for all the wasted food. I had read about the steps being taken to deal with those problems (there is now a program to convert spent oranges into fertilizer and biofuel, for example), but the Ivrea Historic Carnival Foundation did not boast of those advances as an American festival would. At one point, Stefano Ampollini, who runs the foundation’s public relations and has been a fanatical arancieri since childhood, told me: “What we say in Ivrea is that the only orange that is wasted is the one we don’t throw away. “And when I told him I had noticed a child punched in the eye and started crying, Ampollini said, “Yes, and moved on.
Tourists kept coming, even more commonly other Italians; Relatively few, it seems, of – and in fact were not unwanted. But there was little signage or curtains around to orient them, and strangely few souvenirs to buy. Given the dangerous environment, given how much the locals needed those 4 days to provide an all-consuming torrent of fun, it seemed like someone else got in the way a bit. The goal was not to entertain strangers, or appease critics or massage the optics of young people who hurt themselves in 2023. I found Carnival’s goal to be exquisitely simple. It was a game that the Ivreanos enjoyed playing together, for themselves and especially with each other.
He hit me with maximum force as I got into one last show. It was the last procession of the festival, a dark nightly funeral march through the medieval city to mourn the end of carnival. Honestly, I thought I had thwarted this parade and took it to its destination, but before I knew what was going on, I parked on the side of the street with a load of other parade watchers: a bunch of baggy jackets, some of them stained with dried pulp.
The solemn atmosphere. The aesthetic was sober. This time there were no horses, no brass bands or drums, only the sad and out of place singing of a few wooden flutes as the general and his entourage approached on foot. The crowd made no noise. His reverence seemed total. When a phone rang, he drowned. When a long, rubbery fart sounded silently, no single user laughed.
A sensitive balance maintained, between the seriousness and non-seriousness of Carnival, between the madness of the thing and its meaning. I enjoyed the Battle of the Oranges to accomplish this. It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.
Additional video by Luca Nestola.
Jon Mooallem is a contributor to the magazine and the author of a book of essays, “Serious Face. “He last wrote about a Covid oral history project. Andrea Frazzetta is a Milanese photographer. He has worked on many Voyages problems, documenting places like the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia and the first long-distance hiking trail in Kurdistan.
Audio produced through Jack D’Isidoro.
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