Whenever people ask Opera Chic, why do you live in Italy, she usually answers because of the coffee at Marchesi, the look of the little cobblestone streets behind Corso Magenta late at night in the winter, because of Trattoria Milanese and because of Piero della Francesca at Brera and Michelangelo's Pietà Rondanini, and because of 10 Corso Como and Prada's Corso Venezia store, and because Verdi worked and died here in Milan and this is where he chose to be buried.
But she also lives here because this is a country, for all its weirdness, where a concert version of "Nabucco" gets played on the floor of the House of Representatives, conducted by Riccardo Muti, the way it happened last night in Rome (Nancy Pelosi was in the audience, too).
Of course, Muti had recently given a very special encore of "Va' Pensiero" at Opera di Roma, asking the audience to sing along to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italy's unification.
