LA PICCOLA BELLEZZA (THE LITTLE BEAUTY)

It was Sorrentino's 'La Grande Bellezza' on a microbudget and instead of the rooftops of Rome, we were on the rooftop of a recently closed-down bank in a small rural town in the Cotswolds.

My Italian friend brought out a single burner camping stove with his authentic tiny, electric blue coffee maker and as we sat with the heat bearing down on us from the sizzling sun we couldn't help but notice the gas flame heating our coffee was invisible. However, we could observe the heat shimmer like Lawrence does in the Arabian desert in David Lean's 1962 movie masterpiece and as we waited like Omar Sharif for the water to boil, my compadre explained to me that if you wish to impress an important guest or lover you should make them a Cremina (a fusion of sugar and Moca). I wasn't a lover in this scenario so assumed I must then be an important guest. A great honour.

There's something very freeing about sitting on a roof, especially one that feels sort of forbidden like that of a bank. It's almost as if you're a DC or Marvel supervillain plotting your potential takeover of the entire world but casually enjoying a Cremina before carrying out your dastardly and megalomaniacal plan for global domination. I could even see the potential for an opera set - Act III on the battlements of the Castel Sant'Angelo perhaps where I imagined Tosca hurling herself off into the passing traffic down below, directly opposite 'Savers'.

Considering my host was just on a short, late morning work break, we fitted in a pretty vast variety of conversational subjects, including his aloofness towards his Italian identity, several definitions of what constitutes a Bodhisattva, superheroes and fascism, relationships and chivalry as well as various geo-political topics. Just imagine what we might have covered during an entire lunch! Perhaps brevity best suits such a colossal dialectic exchange between two mental giants.

But aside from my jesting boasts of our intellectual prowess, I was also led to thinking of what might have happened if Rodolfo and Marcello from Puccini's 'La Boheme' had got to see a fifth act, set in the spring or summer. Surely they would have been drinking and talking on top of their Parisian rooftops in the Latin Quarter, if not coffee, then something a little stronger.

And now I reflect on rooftops past, I can remember Gorodish, (the Marcello to my Rodolfo) writing to me after the Italian National Team had won some major international game and blasting Verdi's 'La Forza Del Destino' (Serafin) from his own apartment rooftop not far from the one I had just been standing on. We were at that time the two most devoted non-Italian fans of the 'Azzurri' in our local town much to the chagrin of our England-supporting football friends.

Old-fashioned rooftops such as the one belonging to the old bank, with its very own cupola and balustrade, seem made for opera and so now I fantasise about a new summer opera festival that plays out across the rooftops of my local town, and where those down on the streets below will have no choice but to suffer the sublime musical strains just as those prison guards in 'The Shawshank Redemption' do when Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) plays the letter scene from Mozart's 'Le Nozze Di Figaro' through the prison yard tannoy speakers to free the hearts and minds of his fellow inmates.

I can already hear 'Va, Pensiero' from Verdi's Nabucco civilizing the town once more in a renaissance of beauty and purifying the perpetual fog of virtual signaling activism that hangs thick in the air. It will be my Beatles 'Rooftop' Concert and it will soothe the savage rural beasts (purple/blue-black rinse brigade) just as Orpheus once did with his lyre.

But then again, perhaps it is better to keep these secret locations private as it is becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy hidey spaces of peace and joy away from the heavily surveilled world.

If it sounds like I'm losing my faith in humanity then have no fear it was returned to me after my Italian host left me a charming voice note later in the week to inform me that he was teaching a language class on top of the same roof where we'd shared coffee and would now be singing some Italian songs for his students as the sun set.

Perhaps my plan for rooftop music festivals in backwater towns has already begun.

I can only hope.

Thinking back to 'La Grande Bellezza' (The Great Beauty), where protagonist Jep Garmbedella (Toni Servillo) spends a considerable amount of time on the rooftops of his beloved Rome, it appears he senses he is the last man standing from an age of the city's culture that no longer barely exists, the Rome of 'La Dolce Vita', 'Audrey Hepburn' and bespoke suits by Attoilini. His unwavering devotion to beauty regardless of the obvious decay around him is, perhaps, the most noble thing about both him and the movie's credo - a stubborn steadfastness to living an aesthetic life.

Starting the week on my Italian host's far less grandiose rooftop, I had a sense that perhaps I am becoming the Cotswold equivalent of Jep, only a far more impoverished, semi-reclusive version. And yet, as the world of appearances continues to let slip its numerous masks and facades all around me, I'm left with 'diamond in the rough' moments of little beauty such as my Monday morning Cremina and reminded that as long as one remains conscious of the beautiful present then one can far better face the fear of the uncertain future that lies ahead.

Salute!