Indeed, Verona trades on invention: the story of Giuletta e Romeo (the names mysteriously reversed in the vernacular) is the city's strongest draw for most of the year, but from June to August operatic prodigality takes over. Number one, Piazza Bra, is the official address of the Verona Arena, but you need no street atlas to find the pink marble amphitheatre that tonight hosts 22,000 fans for the first performance of Puccini's La Boh?.The gentlemen of Verona who, in 1913, chose to stage open-air operas in one of the largest Roman amphitheatres, proved that imagination can work in place of musical history Aida was the first performance in the Verona Opera Festival. Since then, a number roughly equal to the population of Italy (55m) has watched opera here - and the venue also this year hosts latter-day Bohemians like Duran Duran, Lenny Kravitz and Coldplay.The city's flirtation with fiction conceals her true civic virtues: a collusion of grandeur on just the right side of decay, with marvellous set pieces like the Giardini Giusti - a fiercely formal garden decorating a hillside on the far side of the river.Verona shares an airport with Brescia, at least in Ryanair's book And the two cities share an affinity for Puccini. Brescia's municipal auditorium has about one-20th the capacity of Verona's but it was the location for the greatest second performance in 19th-century music.
Initially, Puccini was as unerringly successful as, say, U2: by the time he had Manon Lescaut, La Boh? and Tosca under his belt, he had eclipsed all the opera composers who came before him, bar Verdi. But Madame Butterfly proved a fiasco when it opened in Milan in 1904 - partly thanks to heckling orchestrated by some of Puccini's less talented contemporaries. But the composer took something of a Lord Coe attitude to adversity: he went back to the piano at his home in Torre del Lago, revised and revived the opera, and tried again at the Teatro Grande. Today, this beautiful little Baroque theatre seems a little cowed by the more modern developments around it, but its ornate pink marble still shines through - rather like Madame Butterfly.To change architectural key from minor to major, you cross the land where "the Po runs down among its followers to find peace", according to Virgil. The ancient poet's home town of Mantua boasts a palace to match the finest in Italy - and a piece of operatic history. Four hundred summers ago, Monteverdi was composing madrigals to order - the orders being those of his patron, the Duke of Mantua. In the course of four centuries, the Gonzaga dynasty created, adorned and embellished the Ducal Palace, employing the likes of Mantegna and Pisanello as painters and decorators.
Today, the jumble of 500 rooms vie for attention with courtyards and chapels.The dukes also kept musicians in commissions. At the start of the 17th century, Monteverdi gave weekly concerts and composed for special occasions. In 1607, when the duke wanted a piece for the carnival, Monteverdi concocted a mixture of madrigals, single-line tunes and instrumental sections based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and called L'Orfeo. Today it is the world's oldest surviving opera.Even though Mantua is steeped in culture, the town council wanted more. So officials fairly arbitrarily chose a handsome house just up the road from the palace, and deemed it to be the home of Rigoletto. For good measure, they have planted a life-size statue of Verdi's troubled and entirely fictional hunchback outside.This part of Italy is violin territory. Cremona, Monteverdi's home town, is the home of Guarneri and Stradivari, while Parma - on the other side of the river - had * *Guadagnini.
