Saleri

The Salesians, formally the Society of Saint Francis de Sales, appear in the novel through the parish hall where Jacopo Belbo spent part of his boyhood. The hall and its band, led by Don Tico, give Belbo an early place in a community organized around religious instruction and music; decades later, the building remains a precise marker in his memories of childhood, performance, and the wish to be noticed.

The Parish Hall and Don Tico

From the terrace at the Bricco, Belbo points out the Salesian parish hall below, a large building with a yard and soccer field. He tells Casaubon that Don Tico taught him to play there, in the band. The view turns a childhood setting into a concrete point of reference in Belbo’s adult life: the hall is still visible, even though he says he has never returned to it.

Belbo recalls that he first went to the hall by chance, where the activities included Mass, catechism, and games. Winning a game could earn a small holy card depicting Blessed Domenico Savio, shown in the statues with Don Bosco. Belbo remembers this religious setting alongside the everyday life of boys, including the contrast between the saint’s raised gaze and the boys’ dirty jokes. The parish hall was at once a place of Catholic teaching and a setting for the ordinary, unruly social world of childhood.

The Boys’ Band

Don Tico formed a band for boys between ten and fourteen. The younger players used toy clarinets, fifes, and soprano saxophones; older boys carried the tubas and bass drum. Uniforms—khaki tunics, blue trousers, and visored caps—made membership visible as a shared undertaking. Belbo remembers wanting to belong to this organized world, where the uniforms and instruments gave the boys a public identity.

Don Tico needed someone to play the bombardon, a bass horn in E-flat, and Belbo took the part. He describes it as the least distinguished instrument in the band, often marking the beat with a repeated accompaniment, but also as relatively easy to learn. His choice is therefore both modest and consequential: the bombardon gave him a place in the band, while the trumpet he later taught himself served a different personal purpose.

Belbo’s Musical Ambition

Belbo says he learned trumpet during summer afternoons when the parish hall was empty, hiding in the seats of its little theater. His recollection distinguishes this solitary practice from his band role: he played the bombardon with the group but pursued the trumpet on his own. He explains that he wanted the trumpet for erotic reasons, because Cecilia, the daughter of the Salesians’ principal benefactress, attended performances with her mother.

At processions and amateur theatrical performances, the band played before an audience that included Cecilia and her mother, seated in a place of honor near the cathedral provost. The opening march began with the trumpets standing and playing alone before the rest of the band joined in. Belbo hoped that taking up the trumpet would draw Cecilia’s attention. The Salesian setting thus preserves a small but revealing division in his memory: the bombardon represents the role he was given in a collective, while the trumpet becomes his chosen means of making himself visible to one person.

Narrative Significance

The Salesians are not developed as an institution with a plot of their own; their significance lies in the community and childhood setting they provide for Belbo’s recollections. The parish hall binds together catechism, games, music, uniforms, and youthful aspiration. Its continued visibility from the Bricco allows Belbo’s past to enter the present as a place he can point out, even while admitting that he has never gone back.

Belbo’s account also reveals how he narrates his own past through particular objects and performances. The holy card, band uniform, bombardon, and trumpet each belong to a different aspect of the same formative setting: religious culture, group membership, assigned duty, and personal desire. The congregation’s role in the story is therefore grounded in the everyday institution of the parish hall, where Belbo’s memories of belonging and his wish for distinction first take musical form.