Black Fox - Chapter 1 Continued

Part 1 is here



As we, arm in arm, entered the elegant eighteen-century building,  I recognized a few familiar faces milling around in the  stuccoed lobby: a  critic writing for the local newspaper  sneered something sottovoce  to his companion, a false blonde with silicon-enhanced lips and way too much makeup for either the hour or the occasion. The critic’s expression didn’t bode well for his opinion of the performance, but everybody in town knew Mr. Lorenzi’s crankiness was as carefully cultivated as his Van Dyck .

I smiled  spotting the tall figure and snowy hair of my high-school chemistry teacher. A gifted amateur musician, he was the terror of those of his  students who were also in the conservatory. He never missed a dress rehearsal and, more often than not, followed the performance on the score taking notes. 

Quite a few members of the theatre’s choir were there too,  women making up at least three quarters of the total. Lucia followed my gaze : “Do you think that they are here for instrumental music?”

 “ You are terrible, you know? Hu Xiaowen’s fame is well deserved and  having him here in Chiarenza is quite the event, he usually moves in way more elevated circles”.

It’s not like we are a blank spot on the musical map, far from it. Our summer opera festival, held in the old Roman theater on the hill, is known world-wide and, together with our rich history and natural landmarks, brings to Chiarenza hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, it’s just that our winter symphonic season isn’t, usually, quite in the same league.

The lights flickered signaling that the concert was about to start, the noise level abated and the tension went up a notch while we all entered the auditorium looking for our places.

Inside, a troupe from a regional TV channel was checking their camera and sound set-up, the flow of incoming public parted around them, narrowly avoiding a minor disaster when an elderly gentleman tripped on one of the cables. As soon as the audience was settled the musicians came in, it wasn’t the full orchestra but a smaller formation with some new musicians carrying Chinese instruments among the local regulars. They took their seats on the stage.

 “ What are those instruments?” whispered Lucia.

 I leaned in her direction “ Those with the bow are erhu, a kind of Chinese violin, only they aren’t really Chinese, they originated with a nomadic people in the North; the wind instrument that looks like a bundle of bamboo canes on a pipe is a sheng, the mouth organ; the two ladies play the moon guitar, zhongruan and the gentleman standing in the back plays the bianqing, a lithophone”. An huff from the man sitting on my other side silenced me, I shrugged an apology to Lucia mouthing “Later”. The lights in the auditorium dimmed, leaving us in half-shadows; only a spotlight remained, aimed at the left side of the stage.  Just a few moments before the  tension in the audience started to ebb,  Hu Xiaowen  entered.

He was tall,  with a longish, strong-boned face that spoke of Northern China and wide, intense eyes the color of dark amber. It wasn’t his looks, though, that held us all mid-breath, that would not have been enough, it was his effortless magnetism, the charisma he exuded with his simple presence that grabbed us and would not let go.

The guy from the  Confucius Institute  who entered after the maestro to introduce the program was the anticlimax.  He must have felt it,  because he tried to warm us up with a couple of jokes and keep up with his written presentation, extolling the ‘unwavering friendship’ and ‘glorious musical traditions’ of Italy and China,  but after a couple of minutes he surrendered and went for a brisk, shortened version before disappearing again behind the curtains with a plastic smile stamped on his face.

Then the music took center stage.