ITALY TRIP - Coughing during the Creation

What is it about music concerts that makes me want to cough?

We were visiting Ravenna to see the ancient churches with their fabulous mosaics, still bright and gorgeous after one and a half millennia.

It was also the Ravenna Festival.  Each night, tickets were just one euro to attend a short concert of sacred music in one of the most beautiful churches – vespers at San Vitale.

The first time we went, Dimitri Grechi Espinoza played a piece of music he had written about the Creation – Oreb.

It was written for solo sax but he had employed the extraordinary acoustic of  the church.  The magnificent resonance and echoes made the music swell to sound like a whole ensemble.

I was completely captivated.  When a couple of oafs came in late just behind us and talked, I turned and glared.

Then it happened – just when it was most important to be quiet, my throat began to rebel.  I did not even have a cold.  Just my mysterious allergic reaction to serious music.

I held onto it for as long as I could, sipped water from my crinkly plastic bottle, unwrapped the rustly cellophane from a lemon sweet.

There were tears in my eyes when finally, I had to let go one short explosive cough.

The cough reverberated around the angelic architecture and soared heavenward.  It sounded like a whole ensemble of coughers.

At the end of the performance, I took care not to turn and meet the eyes of the people I had glared at and left promptly.

However, Espinoza was performing again the next night.  There we were, back again.  But this time I was sucking a cough sweet.

Nigel outside San Vitale