VIAREGGIO. Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi and Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel will be among the most depicted and mocked politicians at the famous Viareggio Carnival, scheduled on February 2015.
Viareggio, a seaside resort in Tuscany, celebrates its own Carnevale every year since 1873 with a spectacular parade of papier-mâché floats on an elegant promenade. These floats, which focus on national and international politics and current events, are 20 metres high and can host up to 250 people wearing masks and costumes. The projects of different 25 giant and small floats were unveiled this afternoon in Viareggio.
Renzi is unquestionably the main target of the attention of Viareggio-based artisans and will be portrayed in different ways – as an illusionist who entice a gargantuan tortoise, which symbolises Italy, using leaf lettuce; as a new Luke Skywalker who discovers that his father is ex prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in the role of Darth Vader; as a huge transformer who tries to reform the Italian costitution as well as labour, healthcare, education and public administration; as a chef who endeavours to clean the dirty Italy kitchen in light of the 2015 Expo alongside Pope Jorge Bergoglio.
The Italian prime minister is indeed depicted as the son of a gigantic Angela Merkel who procreates several Renzi-face babies. This float will be characterised by an Oktoberfest-like atmosphere with Bavarian flags and German songs and people masked as spermatozoa. The German Chancellor will be present on a float denouncing the global warming and the war on gas and energy. Merkel appears alongside American president Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as three homeless people trying to get warm.
The made-in-Viareggio floats will also talk about child abuse, the killing of elephants in order to keep alive the ivory trade and the 70th Anniversay of the Liberation. Minor floats have taken inspiration from the Alan Ford comics and “Despicable me” film as well as from the art of Paul Klee.
The Viareggio Carnival parades will take place on 1, 8, 15, 22 and 28 February 2015.
