I grew up breathing opera at the theatre. I was fed with food and music, thanks to a father who was a passionate musician. So I immediately signed up for the Spring Concert on 21 March, at the Gian Giacomo Arrigoni theatre at San Vito al Tagliamento: on stage, there were some brilliant students of the Conservatory C. Pollini of Padua. This the second year the San Vito Philharmonic has organised the event in a jewel that is the local boast, the Teatro Sociale. Restoration has restored it to splendour and operation, but the theatre was already documented in the seventeenth century. San Vito al Tagliamento in the evening already has lighting that creates charming effects, with porticos, street lamps and medieval views. Enjoying it with the soul was to savour the context of today's emotional memory, highlighting every element: visual, tactile and emotional.

On the ground floor of the theatre, on the floor of Venetian terrazzo, there is a mosaic representing the municipality: a page with lowered sword holds the walled town. A figure, a story. As we go upstairs I can tell you that Giovanni Giacomo Arrigoni (1597- 1675) was from San Vito and actively involved in public life. He was a composer and an organist. My father was too, and here in the area there are some interesting organs of the sixteenth and nineteenth century. But that will be another story. Of Arrigoni as musician all that has remained, the only trace of a theatrical performance, is that dedicated to Leopold I, Gli amori di Alessandro Magno e Rosane, in the National Library of Vienna.

There is more Venetian terrazzo with mosaic on the first floor. A good omen site is the bucolic cornucopia near the piano. For some, marble may seem cold, but I consider it a great work by skilled craftsmen, a mosaic painting. My guide bids me look closely at the windows, made of blown glass with metal rims. Every detail has been carefully studied. As regards its size , the theatre auditorium room is actually quite small, with a floor that is now wooden, with Venetian-style furnishings, red velvet chairs, two floors of seating and the stage. Like when I was a child, I sat that night in a three-seat box facing the stage directly. I caressed the velvet and imagined myself dressed as the Empress Sissi.

My eyes became used to the soft lights of the appliques, the plant-like decorations alternating with animals. A thought makes me smile: years ago, I thought that the hoopoe shown was a legendary fiction but now, after seeing it along the Tagliamento, I know it’s real and alive. Then darkness and silence falls. The lighting converges on the stage. I start to listen to those young talents and the experience becomes increasingly intense.

The musician standing on the right in the final photo is just seventeen years old. We're all swept away. We heard a beautiful First Serenade in E Flat major for 13 wind instruments opus 7 by R. Strauss; more narrativ and sweeping the Serenade No. 10 in B Flat Major K 361 by W.A. Mozart. And the applause at the end embraced the group as it was being photographed with the conductor, Luca Lucchetta.

The theatre can be visited any day by prior reservation.