It was a small, single-story house where Rosa lived, modest but more than sufficient for the needs of an unmarried man living alone.The foyer in which he stood led into the heart of the house, giving way on one side to a charmingly cluttered living room walled with bookshelves and dominated by a lovely old baby grand piano inundated with piles of sheet music. Beneath the piano hid a guitar, a violin, a flute, and a variety of other musical instruments, all in their cases, stowed haphazardly atop one another. The remaining space was taken up by a couch and a chair flanking a low round coffee table, upon which lay an assortment of books waiting to be read. Further along, off the opposite side of the foyer, came two bedrooms, one where Rosa slept, the other a study of sorts with a small desk, a personal computer, a small sofa, and a television. Around the corner, past the bathroom and down the short hall, came the kitchen, through which one could reenter the far end of the living room or continue on to the back door, which opened to a small screened-in porch looking out to the backyard.

Rosa set his things on the floor and hastened about the house, lowering the windows before the rain came. One look out at the now-swaying trees and the blackening sky was enough to convince him that it wouldn’t be long in coming.When the last of the windows was secured, he went to the kitchen and stood at the sink, gazing out at the gathering tempest. A thrill of anticipation surged through him. The crackle of lightning, the ferocious boom of thunder, and the sight of the wind and rain whipping down from the sky had always fascinated him, ever since he was a small boy growing up in Italy’s Abruzzi mountains. Each storm was to him a dazzling symphony of sight and sound, no two ever exactly the same.The power of nature to compose such spectacles at will awed him, filling him with a delicious sensation of terror and delight, not unlike what a child might experience on a carnival ride. And so it was with great eagerness that he looked out with watchful eyes, awaiting the opening strains of this new opus.