Tadzio! Tadzio!

Magic moment.

Yesterday evening Providence held another Waterfire, a strange civic ritual which involves lighting several scores of wood-filled braziers anchored in the waters of a river downtown. Thousands come through the darkness to the blazing river, to watch and be watched in the flickering light as dozens of hidden speakers scattered throughout the streets play eerie mood music.

This time there was live music. The Rhode Island Philharmonic occupied a stage set up in a plaza just off the river. To their back was a fine old office building, reminiscent of New York’s Flatiron, its apex draped with long scarlet banners shifting slightly in the warm breeze. The irregular square and its radiating streets were filled with hundreds and hundreds of chairs, all of them taken. In other spots hundreds more stood at vantage points to the rear, our backs to the river on fire. There must have been two or three thousand people gathered in all.

At the outset the event was annoying. Given the informal setting, many of the bystanders forgot that they were at a concert. Conversations, some of them loud, were kept up. Someone had moved to Boston and was just back for the weekend. Someone speculated that Cindy might have had a boob job. There’s this great new bar in Newport, you should really check it out.

The usual.

Then the Philharmonic bowed into the first few strains of the Adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. To those who have seen Visconti’s Death in Venice, the brilliant film adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella, this beautiful music will be familiar, as it played throughout. Indeed, the Philharmonic’s choice of this bit of Mahler may have been a Venetian wink at Waterfire’s gondolas, which circulate silently on the river, laden with wood to fuel and refuel the braziers.

Whether it was or not, the effect of the music was miraculous. Conversation stalled, then stilled. The cries of the violins swooped and dived through the square, the tall buildings seemed to sway with the shifting banners until, at last, the searing crescendo was reached.

There was not a sound from the crowd. The river behind us burned. A woman beside me was in tears.

Then it was over.