Along with the pleasures of editing my new film on Gaoluo with Andrea, it’s wonderful to be back in Italy.

My first proper opportunity to savour the delights of Italian life was an extended stay in Milan in 1979 to play The rake’s progress, which afforded me time to explore the nearby hill-towns. Over the following years I got to know the picturesque little towns around Tuscany and Umbria (cf. Italy: folk musicking), and through the 1990s I relished summer sojourns in Parma and Ferrara playing Mozart operas with John Eliot Gardiner; but Spain became a more regular venue for orchestral tours (allowing me to explore the exhilarating anguish of flamenco!), so I only got to do occasional gigs in Milan—the Brahms Requiem at La Scala, again with Gardiner, springs to mind.

With Li Manshan and his Daoist band at the Gallerie, Milan 2012.

My last visit was in 2012 on our memorable Italian tour with the Li family Daoists! Having made negligible progress with Turkish on my many recent visits to Istanbul, it’s been good to be back in a culture where I can communicate a bit more efficiently. Indeed, staying in a mixed quarter of Milan has something of the vibe of a migrant mahalle in Istanbul, and takes pressure off my efforts to regain my former semi-fluency in Italian.

Not the Last Supper, but my Last Breakfast.

Taking a break from editing to watch the big Champions’ League match between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, Andrea tells me he went to school in Modena with Carlo Ancelotti. When he tells people, they couldn’t be more impressed if he told them he was at school with Leonardo Da Vinci—”Da Vinci? Never heard of him, what team does he manage then?”

Alongside the numinous medieval hill-towns near Milan, the city may feel somewhat bland—but after a long absence, Italian street life still feels like a blessing.

See also Italy tag.