ESSENTIALS

Travel for the Arts (travelforthearts.com; 0208 7998 350) has a three-day Rossini in Venice tour to commemorate the composer’s death anniversary with top category tickets to attend two performances at La Fenice, guided tours of the city and time to enjoy Venice at leisure. Prices per person start from £2,095 and include flights, accommodation on a B&B basis, some meals, sightseeing tours as per the itinerary, and first category tickets to two performances. Departs October 18 2018. The Rossini Festival (rossinioperafestival.it) is running again next year from August 8-20. aria drifted from an upper window. The culmination of our walking tour was the composer’s birthplace, a three-storey house on a side-street where the exhibition of letters and manuscripts, portraits and memorabilia shed light on the larger-than-life personality of the man (and also taught me a few fascinating facts, such as his fondness for English ale and stout). In the ground-floor gift shop Rossini devotees from around the world browsed among the souvenir mugs and perfumes, the jars of bottled truffles and the hard-to-find recordings of The Silken Ladder and The Thieving Magpie.

Next morning I breakfasted on peaches and cappuccino on the top floor of our hotel, a pleasant four-star with wall-to-wall views of the glittering Adriatic. The talk among the group was all of the night before: a production of Rossini’s opera seria Ricciardo e Zoraide at a sports stadium (the Arena Adriatica) cunningly reinvented as an opera house for the duration of the festival.

I’ll admit to having my doubts about this little-known rarity with its creaky Orientalist plot, but had reckoned without the thrilling voices of star tenor Juan Diego Flórez, the Enrique Iglesias of opera, and South African Pretty Yende, coloratura soprano of the moment, whose dazzling runs were like strings of perfect pearls.

Our programme in the days that followed ran to three operas, a concert, cultural visits and epicurean feasts. Within easy reach of Pesaro lay various pretty towns, well placed for day trips through the placid countryside of the Marches, such as sleepy Fano, just along the coast, with Roman walls and a chocolate-box theatre, where on this summer morning the flagstone streets were magically quiet. Especially memorable was Urbino, a Renaissance hill-town of dreamlike beauty dominated by the Ducal Palace and its haul of masterworks by Raphael, Uccello, Botticelli and Piero della Francesca.

There was pleasure, too, in simply staying put in Pesaro. The town’s retail sphere was an insalata of chic boutiques, bookshops, gastro-grocers and design emporia, with not an Aldi or Zara in sight. Travel for the Arts had laid on meals in friendly restaurants such as L’Angolo di Mario, on the seafront, and Antica Osteria La Guercia, beside the Piazza del Popolo, where we lunched at a table in a secret square, tiny breezes pushing through a thick velvet curtain of midday heat. Waves of golden-yellow pasta with a spinach-sage-and-butter sauce were preceded by pellucid Parma ham and creamy burrata – reminding me that Italian food does elegant simplicity better than most world cuisines.

Over espresso and limoncello the group chatted some more about food, wine, art and opera, happily avoiding all mention of Brexit.

But there was one more item on the schedule, a grand finale before we took our leave: a performance of Rossini’s comic masterpiece, The Barber of Seville. This rip-roaring farce, probably the funniest of all operas, overflows with theatrical brilliance and delicious melodies, the character of Figaro being one of art’s best expressions of joie de vivre. The handsome production by Pier Luigi Pizzi, all whitewashed Andalusian palaces and patios, made a fine backdrop for Rossini’s crescendos, the bubbling energy of his vocal lines.

We left the theatre with smiles on our faces, hitting the promenade, which was still buzzing in the early hours, for hazelnut ice creams and slices of pizza. The sunbeds and parasols had vanished along with the bronzed bodies, and the sea, shining in the moonlight, was as calm as a bowl of olive oil.