La Mortella Gardens in May 2004 were judged the most beautiful park in Italy by Briggs & Stratton.
In 2010, when lady Susana Gil Paso passed away, who was the project creator and curator of this tropical- Mediterranean oasis which has been declined, linked and married in (and with) all the senses to the music of her husband, the composer Sir William Walton, it was written that together with her, “the flower par excellence, the most original, eccentric and elegant one” disappeared too. However, the triumphal context, the vital impulse towards the future of a magnificent inheritance remained, made “of thousands of rare and precious tree species, in the perfect garden like a score”.
And not only. Thanks to Alessandra Vinciguerra, director of the site and president of the Walton Foundation to which the property refers; and to Lina Tufano, who takes care of the musical events, this idea of perfection, of brilliant planning and organisational humanism continues to distill the fascination with unchanged power. And Mother Nature, with her both feminine and masculine breathe, exalts and envelops us like the extraordinary protagonist of a sort of annual recital dedicated to enjoyable pleasure. To search and share. Here the atmosphere is, indeed, of a changing and surprising pleasantness.
And it is now a certainty: it is a hymn to complexity and spontaneity controlled by intelligence. The search for originality and uniqueness is radiated between the architectural discipline of La Mortella and the exuberance of the landscape, in an alternation of British aplomb and pop insular and volcanic incursions; between a classical stave, experimentation and jam-sessions. It looks like an opera booklet, sometimes filled with contaminations, colours and virtuous sounds; standards and variations on the theme. The shapes of water, plants, roots, shadows, lights, flights and aviaries, downpours and steam chase each other between the black and white piano keys, the vibrations of the strings, the impulses of winds and brass instruments, the anxiety of a solo performer; the heartbeat of an orchestra, the applause and the “oohh” of astonishment at the end of a masterful performance. There is an exemplary rigor even when the improvisations are multiplied among the ferns and the water lilies, the acoustics of the Greek theatre; the oriental meditations, the sunsets in the holm oak wood, precisely when the green woodpecker stops its profane ti-ti-ti-toc which challenges the imperturbability and remembers the repeated citations of artistic memory that are transformed, therefore, into controlled excitements. However, never granted. And, like the small flecks of happiness, they are contagious.
