A maestro’s relief at Italy’s reawakening
mainVittorio Parisi informs us that Orvieto’s Spaziomusica will work in July and August, cancelling only its conducting competition. The two operas with student conductors and singers, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Madama Butterfly (Panizza instrumentation) will be staged open air and not in the wonderful opera house. He adds, movingly:
‘I live in Brescia,in the region where the Covid 19 has killed more than half of the 35,000 Italian deaths. I have been in my house with a little garden for three months without a single walk outside and this is a sort of rebirth. It’s difficult to tell what happened, the death of so many doctors not protected in the hospitals, the lack of oxygen, the decisions taken by doctors, based mostly on age, on who could have the oxygen and who could not. Really terrible. We are still doing all things very carefully.
‘I work in Orvieto since 2013 and this year I will teach the Barbiere. Orvieto’s region is one of the safest. I was conducting in Bulgaria when Covid-19 exploded in Italy, I came back with the last available flight. We have lost an average of one person each 1.800, in Bulgaria they have lost one each 45.000. This means something went really wrong in Western Europe.’
Dear Maestro. I’m so glad you are well and that you had your little garden to keep you sane during the lockdown. Stay safe. Steven (Australia).
Corragio, maestro! The best is yet to be. Meanwhile we tend to our garden, like Voltaire’s Candide, or was it Dottore Pangloss?