大象传媒

The ordinary Roman might have been hungry and cold in the winter of 1944-45 (snow fell in January for the first time in living memory) but his soul was richly fed. When I arrived in November 1944 I was knocked sideway at the Royal Opera's programme for the winter season: Lucia di Lammermoor, Francesca da Rimini, La Boheme, L'Elisir d'Amore, Turandot, Mefistofele, Il Piccolo Marat, Le Nozze di Figaro, Madama Butterfly, Suor Angelica, Mignon, Tosca. More. When summer came we were promised spectaculars in the Baths of Caracalla - Aida, Pagliacci, La Gioconda and Faust.

Nor was this all. Ballet would proliferate: Verdi's 'Four Seasons', Respighi's 'Oiseaux', Don Juan (Strauss), Ravel's Bolero, Petroushka (Stravinsky) , La Boutique Fantastique (Respighi/Rossini) and the Polovitsian Dances from Prince Igor (Borodin.). There would be orchestral concerts - some in the Forum and everything... everything was so low-priced that even we soldiers could become musical dilettantes. Many of us had never been to an opera. Some became opera-lovers for life. Some things we had to learn. In the Royal Opera there was a tendency to sell us seats which would find us sitting behind a pillar, our heads bobbing to and fro pendulum-wise. Wise we became to these particular seat-numbers.

My first Roman opera was Lucia di Lammermoor. It was an enlightening experience. The Roman audience had a tremendous critical faculty. When Lucia (Gianna Perea Labia) muffed a famous aria there was an outburst of hooting, booing and whistling. She froze. Then without loss of dignity she spoke to the conductor, Ottavia Zino. He silenced his orchestra. The aria was recommenced and when the last note was heard there came such a storm of clapping and cheering that my eyes dimmed. These people KNEW their music. Where, I thought, in music-starved Britain would such a scene have been possible? I had attended Sadler's Wells and (once) Covent Garden and had heard performances of excruciating awfulness applauded to the zenith.

The other side must be told. I wrote to my wife: 'The opera is, I believe, taken from a book by Walter Scott and it was amusing to see such typical Italians stalking about in tartan plaids. When a Highland fling was called for in the banqueting hall scene, I thought I saw tall, sandy-headed fellows in battle-dress staggering towards the exits uttering strange Gaelic oaths.'

The names and abilities of most of the Roman singers became familiar to me: Maria Caniglia took the lead in Aida, Mefistofele, Francesca da Rimini and many another. Soprano Maria was reported to demand half a kilo of fillet steak before each performance. The result justified the expense. I began marking my programmes - ticks against those singers who pleased me; crosses against those who did not. Among the winners - Giulio Neri, a tremendous bass who revelled in Mefistofele and similar roles, Marcella Covoni, Tito Schipa, Francesco Albanese, a lyric tenor, Olga Bellarosa and Iole Gavino, who was so beautiful that my critical faculties went into free-fall.

I put a cross against Renato Gigli. Her father Beniamino Gigli was the Pavorotti of his day but had hesitated to re-appear when the Allies took Rome. He had sung for the Nazis and had, perhaps, been a little too friendly with them. He must have wondered how he might be received. He appeared on stage one evening - not to sing, but to introduce Renato. Gigli was loudly cheered and thenceforward sang regularly. Renato vanished.

When the company moved into the Baths of Caracalla - that magnificent pile of ruins which could form a background for almost everything - I became aware that opera was a family outing and social gathering for the Romans. They crowded the terraces with their children, their picnic-baskets and bottles of Chianti. They knew the singers like we moderns know pop-idols and soccer-stars but the Romans retained their acute critical faculties. I saw 'Aida' there with 20 trumpeters perched atop the ruins to blaze forth in the Grand March, followed by a magnificent procession of warriors, slaves and animals (borrowed, I suspect, from Rome's Zoo). By contrast Pagliacci, which I had always considered more of a chamber opera, was presented in panoramic style with the now acceptable Gigli in the role of Canio.

To our credit the British were not behindhand in promoting music. British Army Education and Welfare staged an evening of ballet in which Rome 's prima ballerina, Attilla Radice, made a sensational appearance as Salome in Strauss's 'Dance of the Seven Veils' from his one-act opera. Ballet had never been my' 'thing' but I was left gaping - as were most of my comrades. I detected a murmur of 'Cor!' I did not enlarge on this performance when I wrote home: 'Coppelia, L'Apres midi d'un Faune, Salome, and the Prince Igor Dances in a single programme costing me 50 lire (about half-a-crown). One of the girls fainted and the prima ballerina nearly lost her floppy hat during a pas seul in 'Coppelia'. Otherwise the performance was superb.'

British Army Education and Welfare organised an orchestral concert which moved me to lyricism in a letter home: 'I came away dazed by one item in particular - the final scene from Tristan. Do you remember the orchestral synthesis on two records which James lent us? This was performed with even greater sensitivity than that lovely recording. I was completely lost to everything but the waves of sound which seemed to reach out at me, to submerge me beneath a flood of deepest emotion. I am living at concert-pitch in every direction save one that is needed to co-ordinate all the rest - you, my dear.'

The other arts were not neglected. I have before me a thin catalogue: 'An Exhibition of Masterpieces of European Painting - 15th to 18th centuries in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, 1944'. The introduction: 'In response to the many requests of Allied troops to visit museums in Rome which are, of necessity, closed, the Division of Fine Arts, Region IV Allied Military Government has organised the present exhibition. Here are assembled many of the best known and celebrated paintings of the greatest period of Italian art. It is intended that proceeds of the exhibition will form a fund to be used in furthering the restoration of national monuments of Italy damaged by war.'

There were just 46 paintings to be seen. The Palazzo Venezia has many rooms. Some rooms contained just one work, some two - never more. The impact was unbelievable. I was accustomed to galleries where paintings filled the rooms from floor to ceiling. The impact of these solitary canvases was unbelievable. Here, unlike at home, there was no place for the eye to stray but towards the work displayed: Masolino, Masaccio (whom I had enjoyed in Florence), Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Mantegna, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Lorenzo Lotto, Corregio, Raphael, Bronzino, Tintoretto and Titian. But the final coup d'oeil was reserved for my emergence from the final room. There at the end of a long corridor was hung the portrait of that terrifying, glowering, red-garbed Pope by Velasquez ... Pope Innocent (!) the Tenth. His cold eye surveyed me and I felt that I was immediately condemned to Hell.

First impressions are interesting. I sent the catalogue home and now I see I had pencilled: 'This was about the first exhibition to be arranged in Rome after the Allies entered - one or two pictures to each room. Tremendous! It opened my eyes wide to the world of painting.'

Later there was another exhibition in the Villa Borghese which drew upon the galleries of Naples, Urbino, Milan and Venice. This was more comprehensive but that first show stays in my mind to the exclusion, even, of the Vatican Museum. Vatican City, confident in its status as a neutral State within a State had not stashed away its treasures as had the rest of Italy. But here, as in our own National Gallery, the quantity tended to overwhelm.

One exception: Unlike the modern tourist, whisked in and out, I was able to sit for as long as I liked in the Sistine Chapel studying Michelangelo 's frescoes in detail. I wonder if the 115 Cardinals recently assembled to elect Pope Benedict XVI bothered to look at them?

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