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In the world of Opera there is a term which covers a strange happening in the singing of an aria when it appears that the quality of the sound is enhanced through some medium which is unaccounted for in the practice of singing — particularly, this is called a “moment” — a moment which cannot be accounted for in rational terms. When we think of the great Pavarotti singing the “anthem of the Soccer World Cup - Nessum Dorma” in his homeland of Italy — The scenes of Joan Sutherland in Lucia di Lammermoor — the Soprano part by Elisabeth Schwartzkopf at the reopening of the famous Festival Hall at Beyrueth in 1951 — in Beethoven’s Choral of the Ninth symphony, and the unforgettable “Casta Diva’ of Monserrat Caballe in Bellini’s Norma, Or Beverley Sills as Anne Boleyn as she sang her farewell to life in the Tower the evening before her execution in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena.

We have probably all had “moments” in our lives but possibly one of the strangest I ever had was when we were waiting to move up to Montecassino for the push into the Liri Valley after the conclusion of the fourth battle in the middle of May 1944.

We were between Presenzano and Cassino and the noise to the north was indescribable in it’s ferocity as every gun on both sides seemed to be firing one after the other in rapid sucesssion — it was a nightmarish cacophany.

I was standing at the front of my tank in the early evening watching the firefly’s weave their patterns around in competition with the mosquito’s, when suddenly an awesome silence descended and not one gun was firing. The silence on a battlefield is something very strange as not even a cricket would chirp when — suddenly a sound impressed itself on me …. and the moment revealed itself as the song of a Nightingale !

I wonder if anyone else had that wonderful experience /

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