Colombo believes, however, that the building has “enormous potential, enabling us to alternate operas in rapid succession and involve even casual passersby with video projections of rehearsals in the outdoor amphitheater. I feel the house could well become the focal point of a new Florentine Renaissance in the twenty-first century.”

In Florence, there is indeed a feeling that anything can happen, and the great Renaissance of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries still envelops even the most distracted of visitors.

If one prowls the narrower streets late at night or crosses the Piazza della Signoria as morning rises, one has a real feeling of history still interacting mysteriously with the present.

This was certainly the case for Franco Zeffirelli, who attributes much of the underlying inspiration for his work in the opera house to his upbringing and training in this city haunted by ghosts of the distant past.