We love concerts. Nothing like watching a live musician fall into a spell. We scour newspapers and the internet looking for something that we’d like to see/hear. We also check out billboards on our regular drives from Monteloro into Firenze. Sometimes we get very lucky. Sometimes we discover someone special, weaving with magic threads. And sometimes we follow those threads. Or a loose string. Or something that seems like a good idea, with potential to be more. So here’s our latest outing.

On a large billboard as we approached Piazza Cure, we spied the title: Pink Floyd at the Roman Theater in Fiesole. Wow! We’d never been there for a concert, so it sounded intriguing. We stopped by our favorite ticket agency, The Box Office and bought two tickets. Not bad. Only about 27 euro each for left of center, about 10 rows back. Excellent! “Dark Side of the Moon.” We were pleased and a bit giddy with anticipation.

Then we realized that our friend, Drew, would be with us at that particular time, so the next day, we returned to The Box Office and bought a single ticket. Of course, as “luck” would have it, Drew’s seat was even closer to the stage. Same price, same venue—but single seats become quite the commodity as groups and couples fill in around them.

We decided to have dinner at Vinandro in Fiesoleand then walk down the street to the Theater. Now let me tell you about this theater. It really is a Roman Amphitheater. No kidding. The Etruscansfirst settled in the Fiesole Hills nearly 3,000 years ago, and then the Romans displaced them and later built the anfiteatro, amphitheater in a complex of buildings. Dotted around the theater, are the remnants of Roman baths. Pretty interesting. Acoustics are typically ideal in amphitheaters and surely the Pink Floyd concert could only be enhanced with this particular venue.

In addition to some pretty interesting settings for concerts, here are some facts about Italianspettacoli, shows (performances) around Florence: They are rarely scheduled before 9 pm. When they are scheduled to begin at 9, they typically DO NOT start before 9:30. Then they usually go until about midnight. They are usually packed to capacity. In addition, something almost always goes wrong, with little fanfare about changes that have to take place. Italians are quite willing to “just go with it.” Sound system failure? No problem. We’ve seen distractions that are as entertaining as the smooth performance would have been. Gianna Nannini simply climbed atop her piano and sang her heart out with her hands outstretched over her head when the sound system fell apart on her. She didn’t really care about the system malfunction. Oh well, mistakes happen, but sometimes the thing that goes wrong was planned from the beginning, as was the case with the PF concert. Let me explain.

Before the band came out on stage, an Italian man, probably a music critic or journalist, was to present the history of Pink Floyd. Problem? Well, he was dapper enough, no problem there. He was dressed in a white linen suit, complete with a fedora. Why? Well, nobody seemed to know. It was just his “costume.” He moseyed over to a white canvas director’s chair and plopped down. And, here’s an odd bit: an open beach umbrella was sitting right beside him. It was 9:30 at night! Was he trying to emphasize the fact that it was summer? Chi sa, who knows? Then he began READING pages of Pink Floyd history. Really. He was reading to us. Then he paused to pour himself a refreshing beverage, took a sip, and then went back to reading. After about 8 pages or so of single spaced text, the audience became bored as you might expect. So there was moaning. Expressions of impatience. You know . . . that kind of stuff.

The White-Suited Signore stood up looking very awkward. Evidently his feelings had been hurt by this rude audience. So he gathered his pages and walked toward the wings of the stage, dejected, prepared to leave. At that point there was audience remorse, so we began cheering and clapping him back. He seemed to accept this “apology” and sat back down in his chair. And began reading again. We’ve never witnessed anything like that before. Aahh sweet Italia!

Finally, at about 10 pm, the band came out and began playing “The Dark Side of the Moon,” which is supposed to be an exploration into lunacy. After about 3 songs, Em and I were ready to join the exploration. The acoustics were great in the ancient Theater. I could hear every heavy note, every discordant or edgey riff. As I was about to  fall from my chair into a sad heap, Em leaned over and whispered, “I don’t think this is really Pink Floyd. It’s a cover band—maybe Prank Floyd is more like it.” Sure enough, we had believed it to be the original group, but instead it was an Italian counterpart. They were good, very good. Just not Pink Floyd. Hmmmm. Nowhere in the publicity did they explicitly say that.

Posted on July 11, 2011

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