Rebirth

What I will always remember from the spring of 2020 is the silence. Everything simply stopped, and the only noise to be heard was the sound of sirens as ambulances criss-crossed the city, all day and all night.

Piacenza was the Italian city with the greatest number of victims by population. We were all at home, trying to understand what had happened to us. We were the lucky ones who got to worry about jobs or school. Too many were not so lucky.

This video was shown at the first reopening of the Teatro Municipale in 2021, before Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, directed by Plácido Domingo.

[youtube url=“https://youtu.be/vAeD01BzsvQ” ]

In March of 2020 we concentrated on small things — Zoom parties, which webcam to buy for all the video meetings — to take our minds off the terror that was stalking the silent streets. Even the small taste of a return to all of that last winter was too much. I don’t want any more lockdowns to be needed.

Get vaccinated.