Chapter 14 Chapter Fourteen

Thirteen thousand spectators had unknowingly dined with Pavarotti.I really hope he can come to Orange Town again, and next time the menu will be printed on the program. Dinner with Pavarotti (1) The advertising bombardment had begun months in advance, and the bearded, beret-wearing face appeared frequently in newspapers and posters.Since spring, any resident of Provence who has a little bit of interest in music has already known a big news. The figure called the emperor of vocal music by the "Provence Journal"-Pavarotti will come here this summer to perform.At that time, a grand event of the century will be staged, because the performance venue chosen by Pavarotti is extremely special, neither the Opera House in Cavillon nor the auditorium in Guernsey Village, these places will isolate him from nature , he chose a piazza surrounded by ancient stones left by his Italian ancestors when they built the Theater of Orange in the 19th century.Indeed, it will be an unprecedented concert.

Although now empty, the Orchie Theater is still charming and unimaginably large.The entire theater is D-shaped, connecting two semicircular straight walls, 335 feet long and 120 feet high, and is still intact.Except for the patina carved on the stone by nearly two thousand years of wind and frost, the wall looks as if it was just finished yesterday.Behind the wall is a slope excavated from the entire hillside, forming a series of natural stone steps along the hillside, which can accommodate about 10,000 spectators. Originally, seating order in theaters was determined by social class.The magistrates and local councilors sat in the front row, followed by priests and members of the merchant guilds, and then the general public.And sitting at the top away from the dignitaries are beggars and whores.By the 1990s, this regulation had changed.Seats are no longer determined by class, but by the speed of your hand.It is conceivable that the tickets must be snapped up early. If you want to buy tickets, you have to make a decision early and do it quickly.

We are still hesitating, but Christopher, a friend who is used to military life, has bought tickets for us before the tickets are sold out.He packed everything up and gave us our departure order: 6:00, dinner under a magnolia tree in Orange at 7:30, and theater by 9:00.Bring a seat cushion to keep your butt from getting the stone steps.Drinks will be provided during the intermission, and we will return to the base around one o'clock in the morning. There's a relief and a joy in going to an event when someone's running the show and you just do what you're told to do, and that's exactly what happened at this concert.We left the door at six o'clock and arrived in Orange an hour later to find the whole town in a festive mood.Every restaurant is bustling and full of people, and the temporary tables and chairs have been extended to the road.Driving on the road has become a serious test, how can you pass the road without hitting the waiter?More than two hours before the performance started, thousands of spectators flocked towards the theater with picnic boxes and cushions in their hands, and the restaurant also prepared special dishes for the audience who came to hear Pavarotti.The town of Orange was gearing up and waiting for the show to begin when it started to rain.

It hadn't rained here for weeks, and when the first rain fell on the dusty roads, the whole town looked up at the face of God - the waiters, the drivers, the upholstery sellers, and of course the art. Master himself.Really bad!Will he sing under an umbrella?How should the band be accompanied by wet instruments?Can a conductor conduct with a baton dripping with rain?The rain continued and you could feel everyone holding their breath and praying silently. But by nine o'clock, the rain had stopped for a while, stars appeared in the endless night sky above the theater, and we slowly poured into the theater entrance with the music lovers.The theater is surrounded by vendors selling "Pavarotti"-CDs, tapes, posters, T-shirts... In addition to "I love Pavarotti" bumper stickers, all kinds of popular products are available.

The flow of people stops and starts, as if there is a barrier at the entrance.It was only when I entered the theater that I understood why.Because you can't help but stop for a few seconds in front of the stage to take in the huge panorama of the auditorium and experience what Pavarotti will see. There are thousands of pale faces in the darkness, forming row after row of semicircles, gradually disappearing into the night as they go up and farther away.Looking up from the bottom seat, there is a feeling of vertigo hanging upside down.The stone steps are unbelievably steep, and the audience seems to be suspended in mid-air, and may lose their balance and fall down at any time.Their voices were strange, louder than whispers, and quieter than normal conversations. There was only a continuous buzzing echoing between the stone walls, and the sound had been amplified by the stone walls. It's a human beehive.

We slowly climbed to our seats, about 100 feet above the performance stage, and directly opposite the wall hung high in an alcove. Inside was a statue of Julius Caesar, brightly lit by searchlights, wearing royal clothes. Robe, standing upright, arms outstretched to meet the crowd.In the time of Julius Caesar, the town of Orange had about 85,000 people, but now it has dropped to less than 30,000.At the moment, most residents seem to be looking for a rock to sit on. A woman wearing an opera-style sash had just climbed the high stone steps, panting, and collapsed on the cushion next to me, fanning herself with a program sheet.She was from Orange, with a round face and high spirits.She said that she had been to the Orange Theater many times before, but she had never seen such a large audience. She scanned the heads of the people present and said that there must be thirteen thousand people.Oh, by God's grace, the rain has stopped!

The band appeared on stage and began to tune, the audience burst into applause, and fragments of music came out amidst the audience's expectant humming, sharp and clear.With the long roar of the bronze drum, the band stopped abruptly.The musicians and the audience looked towards the backstage at the same time. The black curtain covered the main entrance below the statue of Caesar. The audience stretched their necks forward in unison, as if they were in a rehearsal.The conductor emerges from behind a black curtain. There was applause again, a high-pitched, flirty whistle from behind and above us, and an impatient hiss from the woman next door. "It's not a football game! Damn it!" In fact, it may have something to do with tradition, as the whistles come from the beggars' and whores' quarters, not the high-society quarters where the regal applause is supposed to be.

The band began to play Donizetii's overture, and the beautiful music echoed in the night sky. The theater was baptized by the music, and every note was truly amplified, fully showing its original appearance.Any mispronunciation in any of these would be known to almost every Orange town resident. The conductor bowed to the audience and walked slowly towards the curtain. In less than a second, the audience of 13,000 spectators fell silent.Amid a sudden burst of applause, he emerged—black hair, black beard, white tie, tuxedo, with a huge white handkerchief in his left hand.He stretched out his arms toward the audience, then closed his palms and bowed.Pavarotti was about to sing.

However, the whistling from the beggars and whores quarters has not stopped, it is still the kind of whistle that puts two fingers in the mouth and hails taxis.The lady next to me couldn't sit still, called them "theater hooligans", booed them, and there was a lot of boos from the beggars and whores quarters.Pavarotti waited quietly, head slightly bowed, hands hanging at his sides, the conductor raised his baton, and with the last few bold whistles, the performance began. Pavarotti sang, "Quanto e cara, quanto e be11a", it sounds so relaxed, the bright and spacious voice turns the huge theater into a small room.Standing upright, with his weight fully on his right foot, his left heel slightly off the ground, the handkerchief waving in the air, it was a heart-poundingly flawless performance.

When the last note of the piece disappeared, he shook his head slightly upwards, with a wide smile on his face, stretched his arms forward, then closed his palms, nodded to the audience, and finally greeted the conductor with deafening applause. Shake hands and thank you.All the tracks of the evening ended with this ceremony. The singing started again. This time, the audience's applause had not completely dissipated. He had already walked towards the entrance behind the curtain under the guard of the conductor, and disappeared behind the door.I guess he's going in to give his vocal cords a break, and maybe a spoonful of honey to soothe his throat.But the lady next to me thought completely differently, and what she said continued to pique my curiosity for the next two hours.

"I think he's having a little late-night snack between shows," she said. I said, "Ma'am, it's impossible!" "Hush! The fife's playing." At the end of the piece, the woman returned to her theory. "Pavarotti is a big guy and a foodie. The concert is so long, singing like an angel like him is very tiring. So it makes sense for him to eat in private backstage to replenish his energy. If you study hard Looking at the program list, you can find that there are actually six snacks between the tracks. At this time, the band on the stage has to entertain the audience and divert their attention. I carefully read the program list and had to admire the woman's unique insights.Indeed, between the aria and the aria, there is such a menu hidden: Dinner with Pavarotti (2) Donizetti (thistle salad) Celia (Tomato White Bean Vegetable Soup) Intermission (Venetian plaice) Puccini (Stewed Chicken with Mushroom and Green Beans) Verdi (cheese) Massenet (lemon smoothie) Encore (brandy coffee) Beyond that, there's even more obvious evidence that the opera dinner story isn't just the lady's whim.Like most people, I always thought Pavarotti was holding a handkerchief, when in fact it was bigger, much bigger.I told the woman next to me about my discovery, and she nodded sympathetically. "Obviously, it's a napkin," she says, closing the issue and leaning back to enjoy the rest of the repertoire in comfort. Pavarotti is really unforgettable, not only because of his singing voice, but also the unique typhoon he showed to the audience. The entry time is not bad for minutes and seconds.After one intermission, he returned to the stage with a long blue scarf wrapped around his neck and down to his waist.I thought it was for wind protection. The lady next to him obviously knew him better. "He must have spilled the bechamel by accident, so he used a scarf to cover the marks on his white clothes. He's so cute, isn't he?" The official performance has ended, but the band still stays on stage.From the quarter of the beggars and whores came a persistent cry, "Verdi! Verdi! Verdi!" This time, the audience echoed in unison until Pavarotti reappeared, adding Played the second song, "My Sun" (Nessun Dorm, O solo Mio).The audience was ecstatic, the orchestra bowed deeply, the star saluted for the last time, and the concert officially ended. The exit took us half an hour.When we came out, we saw two limousines driving away from the Grand Theatre. "I bet it's him!" Christopher said. "Where do you think he's going for dinner?" Of course he didn't know, because he wasn't sitting next to the lady, so he didn't know what was going on behind the curtain. Things that happened.Thirteen thousand spectators had unknowingly dined with Pavarotti.I really hope he can come to Orange Town again, and next time the menu will be printed on the program.