Bill Oddie’s tale of bird spotting on Hampstead Heath, ‘Up with the Bark’, is at 5.40pm. ACT I The year is 1994. DUKE LUCIANO sits in sultan-like splendour in a hammock on the terrace of his £3m home in Modena (It’s more a small village than a home, actually. It’s got its own private racecourse and owner-approved restaurant.) He has just had a modest lunch of fettuccine all’arrabbiata with a side order of meatballs.
Replete, he sings of his success, for he is a man who has conquered the world. Since he linked up with Jos?arreras and Placido Domingo at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in 1990, the Three Tenors have become the most successful act in the history of classical music. Since his version of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma!”, with its ludicrously sustained penultimate note, became the theme song for Italia 90 in the same year, millions of football-loving, philistine Euro-oiks from Wigan to Warsaw have started to take a passing interest in classical music. As a result, he has now sold more records than anyone in history.
His song of triumph is interrupted by the arrival of his secretary, NICOLETTA MANTOVANI.
Though sharing a family name with a man who was a byword in teeth-melting light-orchestral slush, she is attractive and a dream of youth at 24 The Duke is 58. He sings of his declining powers, her innocence and youth, her stenographical talents, his desire to see her with nothing on Signorina Mantovani capitulates She climbs into his hammock Enter a paparazzo. He photographs them kissing as the straining canvas sways to and fro…ACT II Summer 1996. The direct taxation offices of the Italian Ministry of Finance. Two MINOR CIVIL SERVANTS are finalising the details of a new crackdown on tax-evading celebrities. They sing a duet expressing their pleasure in having nailed Sophia Loren and extracted £3m from the skiing champion Alberto Tomba.
They sing of corruption in the showbiz industry and the fashion world, and how they enjoy putting the frighteners on millionaires called Giorgio.Enter MASSIMO (“The Roman”) ROMANO, the direct tax office’s direttore generale He is a driven man. In a passionate aria to his quaking associates, he explains how he cannot rest while work-shy singers and no-brain sports personalities get paid a fortune for doing sod all from morning till night and think they can get away with not paying their legitimate tax burden by pretending to live abroad.Enter, with a crashing of cymbals and booming of kettledrums, the Satanic figure of OTTAVIANO (“The Turk”) DEL TURCO, Italy’s Minister of Finance. He greets Sgr Romano with an embrace and pledges his support for il fisco’s bold initiative. They sing a duet, pledging themselves to work tirelessly until they snare some really, really big figure in, say, the Italian music world, as an example to other villains.