Sitting at the pool while the Emeritus Chamber Orchestra from Israel above in the Bellapais Abbey rehearses Beethoven’s “Concerto for Violin, Cello, Piano and Orchestra in C Major, Op. 56” for this evening’s performance, I am entranced.
The music filters down the hillside. A personal concert. Sun, sea, flowers of every color, lemon trees, pool, walled abbey built in the 1300s, Kyrenia seaport below our mountainside resort, Bellapais Gardens. Evi, Justine, Jonathan and I have the pool to ourselves. Can it get much better than this?Last night we attended another concert in the series at the abbey: Haydn, a different Beethoven concerto, and Gluck’s “Overture to ‘Iphigenia at Aulis.” We shared the audience space with Mehmet Ali Tarat, the President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. I have seen both leaders—of both sides of this island--at wonderful musical events. Surely, on an island so small, they can find the common threads to bring peace to this land.
The morning sun is fierce upon my exposed back, but the pool—clear, cool, and inviting—in front of me reflects the blue sky’s cirrus clouds. To the right, through the visual spaces between red hibiscus blossoms, bougainvillea trailing in the trees, sago palms, and Cyprus trees, the Mediterranean Sea merges with the sky at a hazy blue-gray horizon.
The orchestra stops. Silence. A violin run begins again, repeating the phrase. Another pause. A musical note is played and instruments, one by one, join in to match the pitch. A tuning session in earnest to bring the group together. And now the swell—music for the ages, above Kyrenia, across the sea toward Turkey, and fully into my soul. Music is life itself.
What a perfect spot to breathe in the joy of “ being.” Bellapais—beautiful peace.
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