Overture

A Cream Legbar rooster with a soft crest and pale cream-grey plumage in a pale pink linen jacket and a black bow tie, perched on a black park bench in a square paved in black-and-white wave-patterned stone mosaic, the rose-pink neoclassical Teatro Amazonas with its coloured dome behind him, wet paving shining after tropical rain at dusk

Italian Marble, Upriver

They built an opera house in the middle of the rainforest, with marble from Italy and roof tiles from Alsace, and for a hundred and thirty years the forest has mostly let it be. He sits out on the square in the warm wet dusk, waiting for the first bars to drift through the open windows.

27 July 2026