One Chance (16 page)

“Lui è Inglese!”
(He's English!)

At this, the guard relaxed, rolled his eyes in understanding, scribbled on my ticket, and handed it back to me. (I hadn't validated the ticket.)

I arrived in Rimini, where I was staying with a family on Via
Santa Maria al Mare, which thankfully wasn't far from the station. I struggled along with a map and my luggage in the heat; it was 35 degrees Celsius by now, and I'd never experienced heat like it. I found the house and rang the bell. I was met with the sound of a dog barking and a woman's voice shouting down from the balcony above.

“Si?”

I muttered a few words: “Uh,
Io sono
. . . I don't know.”

“Che cosa vorebbe?”
(What do you want?)

I didn't know enough Italian to explain myself, so I answered in English. “I'm on the language course
I Malatesta!
”

“Aspetti!”
she said, signalling for me to wait.

Eventually she answered the door, holding the dog back. It was only a small yappy dog, but from my experience as a paperboy, I knew it was more likely to bite than an Alsatian. She signalled for me to sit and proceeded to make a phone call. She became quite animated, then turned her attention back to me.

She asked me where I came from. I told her that I was from Bristol and I was sorry I didn't speak very much Italian. I wondered whether my rather hopeful estimation of the standard of my Italian had come to bite me on the rear, as she told me in very broken English that she spoke only a little English.

Eventually another lady came; she turned out to be the daughter of the woman I'd been speaking to, and the situation was resolved. I thanked the mother for the cup of tea and headed up to the room that was to be home for the next month.

My Italian lessons started the following morning. Right from the beginning they went well, and I found that I got on with both the
teachers and, to my surprise, the other pupils. Those of us on the singing classes quickly developed a real community spirit. There were five of us, and we started to meet up in the evenings and eat out in local restaurants. There was Peter from Denmark, Kylie from Australia, Megan and Angela from New Orleans. Megan and Angela had travelled over together, so they already knew each other. Peter was a very serious individual who appeared to be really intense. Kylie became one of my closest friends.

Along with a few students from the language-only classes, I spent my evenings exploring the restaurants and pizzerias of Rimini, usually round Viale Vespucci, a principal thoroughfare behind the main seafront.

For the first time in my life, I truly felt I belonged somewhere. Not only did I get to sing most days, but I also met up with other people, and they actually liked me. In language lessons, we practised different types of scenarios as we progressed. In one session I came across a question I would have dreaded fifteen years earlier. We were asked to say what we thought of each other. When one of the girls in the class was asked what she thought of me, her response almost made me blush.

“Paolo é bello e simpatico
.”

This was a new experience for me. Back in school, I'd been used to people saying nasty things to me when asked this, not being told I was handsome and nice.

In the singing lessons we would work on different repertoires with the teacher, Mario Melani. He was the artistic director of the Accademia del Teatro “Città di Cagli,” the opera school at Cagli, a small town in the rural part of Marche. I recognised the school from the programs of the Francisco Viñas competition in
Barcelona that had almost been the nemesis of my career. I got on well with Mario. He was a good teacher; he told me that my main weakness was the amount of tension in my body.

The
répétiteur
for the course was a brilliant pianist called Carlo Pari. He was always great fun, and as well as being a brilliant musician he was a great attraction for the female members of the course with his slightly dishevelled long dark hair. On one occasion, we had a look at a piece from Giordano's
Andrea Chenier
. It was a powerful aria called “Improvviso” in which the main character takes the local lords to task over the fact that they were feasting while the poor struggled to get bread. I was singing one section when I noticed that Carlo had stopped playing because he was laughing so much.

“Be careful with your vowel sounds,” explained Lee, one of the assisting teachers who would later become a great friend. “They can change the meaning of the whole sentence.”

“If you sing those words on Saturday,” a still chuckling Carlo added, “then the audience will laugh at you!”

I was confused. I had sung, or thought I had sung,
“ho un grande pena”
(I have great pain).

“You ended the word
pena
with an ‘e' not an ‘a,'” Lee explained. “
Pene
means penis. You were singing about how big your penis was!”

At the end of every week, we would perform a concert at different small venues in villages round the local area. The director of the language school, Bruno Fabbri, acted like a local impresario and organised our post-concert dinner. The food was usually quite simple, but always unbelievably fresh and tasty. At this particular meal it was bread, cheese, and cold cuts. I loved the
fresh pasta in Italy and also the ever-present smell of garlic and oregano. The wine flowed, followed by the inevitable limoncello and grappa. Both of these were best served ice cold. The limoncello was way too sweet otherwise, and the grappa had a serious kick. The women liked the limoncello but not the grappa, so I ended up drinking nearly all of it!

The first concert was very eventful. We were performing outside the church in Villa Veruchio, not far from Rimini. It was a windy evening, probably due to a thunderstorm in the area. Lee was there to assist Carlo, and it was all she could do to hold the piano's lid up. In the end the weather became too bad and the concert ended early.

We played in a few different places, including Castello di Longiano, but my favourite was one of the capitals of the old northern kingdom of Italy, San Leo. A pretty little town, San Leo is nestled in the mountains surrounding San Marino. Our journey there took us above the altitude where your ears pop, and the scenery was breathtaking.

The month ended all too quickly, and it was nearly time to say goodbye to the rest of the group and head home. But I was approached by Bruno's daughter, Silvia, who asked if I wanted to stay on for a couple more months. I hesitated because I had only set aside enough money for four weeks, and not only would I have to pay the fees but would also have to cover my living expenses. She said she would speak to her father.

Silvia came back and offered me a 75 percent discount on the course fees, although I would have to pay full price for the accommodations. I worked things out and decided I would go
ahead. I felt I had made progress, both with my Italian and my singing, and I wanted this to continue.

My stay extended, I visited Florence and Venice with the language school, and was enchanted by both cities. There were more singing sessions, this time with a baritone, Thomas Busch. I returned to San Leo again, and was put in charge of page turning for Carlo.

This was a challenging job. I wanted to sidestep it, as I knew how difficult it would be, trying to concentrate on the music while admiring Carlo's playing on the piano. Page turning is hard enough without its being a very fast-flowing Schubert piece. The piece was sung well by a Northern Irish soprano called Rebekah Coffey, but I couldn't concentrate on her singing because of the speed of the accompaniment. If I was a moment late in turning the page, I got a stern look from Carlo; if I was a moment early, I got a glare.

San Leo was a beautiful city, and its auditorium had great acoustics and atmosphere. The audience tended to be a well-educated one, polite in their applause and a little reserved. This particular Saturday evening was to prove a watermark moment for me. I had already performed Francesco Cilea's “Federico's Lament,” one of my favourite pieces, and also Giordano's “Improvviso”—this time with the correct pronunciation of
pena
! I just had one more aria to sing: “Nessun Dorma.”

With Carlo at the piano, I tended to perform “Nessun Dorma” more slowly than I had with my backing track. That didn't bother me, because I felt that a few of the popular recordings were too quick, as if in too much of a hurry to get to the famous bit. Unlike
my earlier performances, this time, I could sense that something was different: the audience was attentive from the start.

As the piece drew to a close, I remember feeling happy with my performance. Even so, I wasn't expecting the reaction I got from the audience: the whole place erupted. I took my bows and quietly left the stage for the dressing room. Even from there I could hear the audience shouting for me to return. I couldn't believe it.

Carlo came through and told me I needed to perform again. This was completely unprecedented. We discussed what I should perform, as I had already performed everything we'd prepared for the concert. By now, the audience had been applauding for over five minutes and we needed to get back on stage.

I walked out nervously and thanked the audience in Italian. I then announced my next song:

“‘E lucevan le stelle,' dall' opera
Tosca
di Puccini.”

Again, the audience erupted. I sang the aria and finished to another great reaction. I left the concert on an absolute high. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world, and I didn't want to leave it behind.

My third month in Italy soon came round, and I took lessons from another teacher. This time it was a Russian mezzo-soprano called Svetlana Sidorova. She encouraged me to look at French repertoire by Massenet, and worked me through the famous aria “Pourqoui Me Reveiller.” I loved it, and although I didn't agree with everything she said, I made very good progress; and she really helped me get my throat to relax.

She was impressed with my range, and wanted me to work on the junior section of the Rossini Festival in Pesaro. I would
need to work hard, and I was really pleased that she felt I had potential. Her approach to stagecraft was to get us moving. She would play Tchaikovsky, in particular
The Nutcracker
and
Sleeping Beauty
. I found this a challenge. She wanted us to move as the music made us move. Her real aim was to make us lose our inhibitions, but that was always going to be a struggle for me.

As my time in Italy was drawing to an end, I had another lesson with Mario Melani. He expressed his amazement at how far I had come in just three months, both in my use of the Italian language and in my singing.

“I'll let you into a secret,” he told me. “I was on that panel in Barcelona. I liked your voice then. No one listened to you sing that day. Why? Because your Italian was so poor.”

Mario told me that he was so impressed with my progress that he wanted me to join the opera school in Cagli. Not only that, the fee for the year would be the equivalent of £700; he had offered me a special price. I couldn't believe it. This was the same school in which all the semi-finalists at the Viñas competition were awarded a place.

I discussed the opportunity with Carlo and Svetlana. They both felt it was a good opportunity, but there was one very practical problem. How was I to live for the next year? Although the school at Cagli was well respected, the city itself was a small one and lodgings would be difficult to find, not to mention part-time work.

Carlo and Svetlana had another suggestion. The school in Rimini was looking to form its own conservatory. It was to open in January 2001, and jobs would be much easier to find in Rimini. My problem was that I was pretty much out of money. I knew
that when I went back to the UK, I would need to return to my job immediately. I had already taken a huge leap of faith coming to Italy for three months. To stay for another year would take more than my confidence and bank balance could account for.

In the end, I put off my decision and headed back to the UK. After all, the I Malatesta conservatory in Rimini would open only five months later. Unfortunately, I was to learn that in Italy many things might be planned with great enthusiasm but that didn't mean they would happen. This was to be the case for the I Malatesta conservatory. Might I have chosen the opera school in Cagli had I not had the cosy option of Rimini? I will never know.

CHAPTER NINE

Looking for Love

W
HENEVER
I
WENT
to the Horn and Trumpet for a few drinks, the chat would often turn to the normal discussions young men have. The Horn and Trumpet was a typical British pub of the time: a lively, noisy bar, with a smell of cigarettes that assaulted the senses in the years before the smoking ban. We'd sit there talking, and it never took long for the subject of girls to come up.

It was almost a decade after Allison before I had another girlfriend. Despite having some female friends at university, the relationships never progressed any further, although I did give one very tall blonde a Valentine's card through the university postal system. She told me that she didn't like me “that way.” I had heard this many times and just assumed I was unattractive.

The discussions at the pub would get quite raucous, and on one particular Sunday we went round the table asking people when they had lost their virginity. Most of them said at varying times in their teens. I was honest.