April 02

Giovanni Jacopo Casanova's Birthday
 
In Arthur Kopit's and Maury Weston's Tony-Award musical Nine, there is a barcarole sequence that begins:
 
  "Every girl in Venice is in love with Casanova,
Every girl has kissed him once or twice.
Every girl in Venice is in love with Casanova,
As long as Casanova pays the price."		  

Aside for the euphemism "kissed", these lyrics correctly mirror the fate of the  world's greatest lover when he turned forty and his legendary sexual prowess began to fail him.  With his inability to sustain repetitive sexual acts, his self-confidence began to wane and eventually led to his total impotence. When he began to fear his inability to perform with new women, Casanova began to revisit his previous one-night stands because he had less to prove with the women with whom he was once legendary,  However, when his former conquests began to complain, Casanova began frequenting prostitutes where he was not under any pressure to perform.

  

Giovanni Jacopo Casanova

 


In his Memoirs, Casanova described his famous "oyster games" in which he and his sexual partner or partners (he enjoyed ménage sex, often with sisters and once with dwarfs) would initiate the evening by passing raw oysters from other mouth the the other's.  When his partner inadvertently dropped an oyster in her décolletage, Casanova would gallantly retrieve it with his mouth.  It was Casanova's fondness for oyster games that eventually popularized oysters as an aphrodisiac.

The infamous Venetian sexual athlete has been portrayed by several actors including Donald Southerland in Fellini's Casanova  (1976) in which a somewhat freaky--looking Southerland wore a prosthetic nose and chin and shaved off the front part of his hair, and once told a crowd laughing at his appearance "When Fellini says get a hair cut, you get a hair cut."  Health Ledger played Casanova as a romantic and eventually faithful hunk in love in Lasse Hallströms' Casanova (2005). However, it was Peter O'Toole who portrayed the aging Casanova to perfection in the Sheree Folkson's TV presentation of Casanova (2005).

There's a pre-Viagra adage that when a man turns forty, he begins to think more of food than sex, and that's what happened to Casanova.  The world's greatest connoisseur of women became a great connoisseur of food, and began to  concentrate most of his energies on gastronomy. Casanova created several famous dishes that are still popular including Crabmeat Casanova and Pasta alla Casanova (pasta with sausage, mushrooms, and white truffles)
 

 

Pasta alla Casanova
 
Ingredients
*
2 TB olive oil
1/2 lb Italian sausage, removed from casing, and crumbled
1/4 lb portabella mushrooms, sliced
1/4 lb shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1/4 lb porcini mushrooms, sliced
 

*See Appendix A
 

 1/4 cup dry white wine
3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan reggiano
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 lb pasta
1 TB fresh parsley, minced
1/2 ounce white truffles, shaved

 

 
Instructions
  1. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat.
  2. Add sausage and allow to brown, stirring often, about 3 minutes.
  3. Add all of the mushrooms and sauté for 1 minute.
  4. Deglaze pan with the wine. Add glace de viande, and allow to reduce for 5 minutes.
  5. Stir in 1/2 cup of cheese and season with the salt and pepper.
  6. Meanwhile, cook pasta until al dente in salted water.
  7. Toss with the sauce, and top with shaved truffle and remaining cheese

Makes 4 servings.