SORRENTO'S SCENES GO ON AND ON

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, January 22, 1993                   TAG: 9301220015
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
SORRENTO'S SCENES GO ON AND ON
It has been a few months since Jerry Myers has been to work in Villa Sorrento Restaurant on Patterson Avenue, but Rosa Provenzano isn't worried.
"He works when he feels like it," she says. "Sometimes he comes, sometimes he doesn't."
Myers is painting the walls inside the restaurant - a vast, intricate mural packed with scenes from Italy. There are seaside villas and St. Peter's Square, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and scenes of Venice. Vesuvius. Full moons. A jet streaking across a starlit sky.
These are not gigantic, sweeping vistas. They are small and detailed. It would take several plates of cannelloni, a jug of Chianti and enough spumoni to sink a tanker to spend enough time inside Villa Sorrento to thoroughly review Myers' masterpiece.
It is the perfect place to eat with a boring date. Plenty of other stuff to look at.
In fact, were it not for mini-Graceland - the most popular unofficial tourist draw in all of Roanoke - the Villa Sorrento murals would be the premier curiosity for out-of-town guests in the valley. The Italian restaurant's walls are still a must-see.
Myers worked on one of the restaurant's rooms for five years, and then he rested. Rosa and her husband, Joseph, who together run the restaurant, built another room - bigger than the first.
Rosa walks into the pitch dark of the newer room in midafternoon. Business is light right at this moment. She is wiping her moist hands on an apron. She flicks on the lights. Myers has been at work in here for 3 1/2 years. Three walls - each must be at least 35 or 40 feet long - are covered now in mural. The fourth and final wall has just a rough sketch of a gondola. This final phase of Myers' Michaelangelo is the shortest wall of all - cut short by a doorway and a fuse box.
Barring a commission to paint the ceilings, or yet another Villa Sorrento addition, the completion of Myers' work seems to be drawing near - 15 years after he began.
Not to worry.
There will be plenty of clean canvas before long.
Wilson's Restaurant, which enjoyed a long run of its own on Brambleton Avenue, recently closed, and Villa Sorrento has expanded into its shop at Red Rock Road.
Villa Sorrento II should open in about a month, says Rosa.
She and Joseph and their four children - all of whom run the original Villa Sorrento - will be running Villa Sorrento II. That means the ziti, the eggplant parmesan and the pizza all should taste the same.
The place will be a smashing success.
But there's an obvious question here.
What about the walls? Will those beautiful, clean canvases of walls in the former Wilson's prompt the Provenzanos to commission new murals? Will Jerry Myers be beckoned to continue his life's work?
Will the birth of Villa Sorrento II mean the creation of Mural II?
"No, we can't. We're just renting," says Rosa. "But he is going to do some work on the doors so that we can have some privacy inside."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB