ABSTRACT
At the ancient Greek theatre of Epidauros, 20,000 people have assembled to see an opera whose prima donna has a drawing power that is unprecedented. Amongst the crowd is a ten-year-old girl. It rains, the show is cancelled and a whole week passes before the occasion can take place. By this time anticipation is at fever pitch, but the singer’s performance rises to meet it. The child is ‘transported by the power of her voice and the dramatic truth of her interpretation’, but also by ‘something deeper, by the intensity of the fire I could feel raging inside her, consuming her at the same time as it illuminated everything around her’.2
