Nessun dorma – Taste Scene

A full moon hung low in the sky on that balmy summer night in 1990 when Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras met on stage at the ancient Baths of Caracalla in Rome. It the eve of the FIFA World Cup Final and as such, football fans the globe over waited in anticipation of the match between Argentina and West Germany. The Three Tenors – as they could come to be known forever thereafter – had previously agreed to set aside their professional rivalries so that they might take part in the benefit concert to raise money for charity.

The world was in motion: The Berlin wall was officially being dismantled after the operation had begun the previous November. Joanne Rowling had an idea for a book whilst on a train from Manchester to London and the Happy Mondays were stepping on.

In Rome, the three most famous and most acclaimed tenors in the world were about to embark on a seminal concert, a recording of which would become one of the best-selling classical albums of all time.

Nothing like this gig had ever been done before, at least in modern times and conversely, few thought it would even take place, up until the triumvirate arrived on the stage.

As the gig was a high class fundraiser, the attendees were not members of the hoi polloi and instead, were made up of the great and the good of the Roman upper classes. There were also a number of royal guests in tow, including one king of Spain. This was an event for high flyers and those of divine rights. It was a night for making history. It was not a concert of freebies for the great unwashed.

As the event had taken an age to produce and finalise, the seats in the historic Baths of Caracalla were set out in the days prior to the performance with, of course, the front row being reserved for the royal visitors and the heads of state. However…

On the very night of the performance, with the full moon rising, with the three tenors warming up and with the jewellery-clad hifaluters clinking and jangling their way to their places, all appeared in order – that is – until the Italian prime minister and the royals found that their allocated seats were in fact, NOT in the front row. Shock!

At some point during the hours of darkness of the night before, the organisers of the event, which is to say, the workers behind the scenes, had pulled out another row of seats in front of the front seats. And so, as Luciano, Plácido and José made musical history with the performances of their careers, the waiter, the driver, the janitor and his girlfriend sat in front of the king of Spain and his clinking and jangling contemporaries.

I love this story. I think it says a lot about the passion and anarchic tendencies of Italian psyche; how the people behind the scenes couldn’t allow themselves to miss out on the concert of a generation just because they couldn’t afford the high priced
entry.

I was thinking of this story last week when I was making our weekly pasta dinner. For a change (and for the craic) it was home-made pasta and in an attempt to get into the mood, I stuck on The Three Tenors, live in Rome. I don’t listen to a lot of opera but if you’re going to the bother of making fresh pasta, a bit of Nessun Dorma always helps (as does a glass of chianti).

Personally, I think that there’s a widespread misconception that fresh pasta is somehow better than dried pasta. For me, both of these incarnations have their merits. The fresh pasta might have more of a flavour from the fresh egg yolks but at the same time, what is pasta all about really? It’s a receptacle for sauce and a carrier of that sauce’s flavour. No-one but no-one is eating plain pasta and savouring the flavour (unless you’re mental). It’s about what you do with said pasta – fresh or dried – that makes the difference. Moreover, if you’re have a thick vegetable and meat ragu, the ONLY pasta shape to have is dried fusilli because you can’t have al dente with fresh pasta, no matter what shape you make.

Still, fresh tagliatelle with a beef ragu or, better still, fresh tagliatelle with butter and parmesan, is such a joy.

There is a soft, springy, chewiness that can only be achieved with fresh – plus – I find that fresh pasta somehow absorbs more of the flavour than its dried equivalent.

Whatever the case, if you’re making fresh pasta to savour the chewiness and its proclivity for harnessing the flavour of a sauce, you could do a lot worse than the Three Tenors and that balmy night at Caracalla.

The recipe* I use only makes a small amount and you don’t have to have a pasta machine to make tagliatelle or even lasagne sheets, for that matter.

I find it to be a therapeutic job for a Sunday afternoon when there’s no-one else about. Stick on the original Three Tenors performance, living their best lives in Rome and pretend you’re Italian. Andiamo!

Channelling the spirit of the waiter, the driver, the janitor or his girlfriend is optional but recommended.

* recipe to be included next week with a full set of instructions (I ran out of space).