He

Blue eyes, grey hair, no smile. This is the portray of the professor I interviewed this afternoon. While I was interviewing him I felt relaxed as someone who drives a bumper car without seat belt. In this case, the car was a chair in a department of Bioscience at Cardiff University, located in the office of a British academic and the seat belt was the preparation about animal life that I don't have. Amazingly, he kept eye contact without being penetrating. He is handsome without being attractive. Energetic without making a motion.

When I left his office I felt as I was coming out from a painting. I am still oil colours dirty.

My first time

I was 11 years old. I didn’t know anything about it, but it was an exciting experience I would never forget for the rest of my life. My parents were very happy about it because they felt that at my age I was ready to understand beauty.
It was a special occasion, not only for me, but for the all community of Ascoli Piceno, the city where I was born. On the 15th of October 1994, the doors of Ventidio Basso theatre opened again after a closure period for restructuring works and I was one of the first people to enter it after 15 years.
They showed Verdi’s Traviata played by Giusy Devinu, it was the first time I attended an opera and also the first time I saw a naked breast in a stage theatre, as Violetta, in the first act appeared semi-naked. That sight made me think: “Is this show appropriate for a child?”
Tickets were sold very quickly but my father had the chance to get the last one, mine. I was alone; sitting in stalls between a woman in her forties and a man in his seventies. Both were alone. We were three spectators with single ticket. I remember that, as soon as Violetta came into the scene, with naked breast, I immediately looked at the gentleman sitting next to me to see whether he was bothered by the nudity. But he was motionless, serious, a shadow in the dark.
When the orchestra played Libiamo né lieti calici I wanted to leave my seat starting to dance, the sound was so energetic. But I couldn’t move, and I started to feel compressed in my seat.
As the show proceeded I forgot what was happening on the stage and started looking around. The boxes and people inside them, a few binoculars, if only I could have one of those fantastic binoculars, I thought.
In the second act Violetta, the protagonist, arrives at the party with Baron Douphol. They see Alfredo at the gambling table. When he sees them, Alfredo loudly proclaims that he will take Violetta home with him. At that moment I sank in the seat and fell asleep.
I woke up a few minutes before the end while the doctor was announcing Violetta’s dead: “Oh what unbearable grief!”