The toast
"Libiam né lieti calici, / che la bellezza infiora; / e la fuggevol ora / si inebri a voluttà".
("Let us drink from the goblets of joy, / adorned with beauty; / and the fleeting hour / shall be intoxicated with pleasures".)
The most famous toast in the whole history of opera is certainly the one sung by Alfredo in the first act of Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi. It is a toast in which shared joy is veined with allusions to love ("for with wine, love / will enjoy yet more passionate kisses").
The forms vary, people say cheers or prosit or skol, but the pleasure of raising a crystal wine glass brimming with that most promising of nectars has remained unchanged over the centuries. Poculum or flûte, calix rather than glass, the history of civilisation could be narrated through the imaginative and bizarre forms that man has given to glasses, goblets and jugs.
The central nature of proposing toasts during social occasions is supported by religion and a real and proper literary genre based on toasts which has come down to us from oriental civilisations, or at least the Greeks, is truly based on religion. The cult of Dionysus, the God of grapes. It was a horn that intoned a melody during orgiastic processions in which the initiated sang praises to the patron of the "soave licor" in the midst of mime and dancing.
Coming down from the Parnassus of legend and setting foot firmly in the world of production, "Cosi Tabellini" is proud to present its collections of tumblers, goblets and pitchers that celebrate the combination of glassmaking tradition and the imagination of contemporary master pewter makers.
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