The Observatory

There are evenings that a city does not forget, and this correspondent believes with some conviction that Thursday last was one of them. The Observatory — the traveling celestial exhibition brought to us at long last by the celebrated impresario Orlando Castelliano and his new bride, the incomparable high-wire artist Celeste Vale — opened its tent poles to a crowd of nearly eight hundred souls, each of whom emerged an hour and a half later wearing the same baffled, luminous expression: that of a person who has witnessed something they cannot quite account for.

Mr. Castelliano, who has spent the better part of a decade quietly assembling what he calls "a home for the extraordinary," spoke briefly to this correspondent before the evening's programme commenced. He is a tall man, precise in his gestures, with a quality of stillness that reads less as composure than as a very deep attention. "We are not here to astonish," he said, adjusting a brass cufflink with one practiced motion. "Astonishment is what you feel when something exceeds expectation. We intend to rearrange the expectation entirely."

He has not overstated himself. The Observatory arrives draped in the imagery of the night sky — deep velvets the colour of open water, lantern-light strung in arrangements suggestive of star charts, the twelve signs of the zodiac rendered in gilt filigree above each archway. One moves through the grounds with the distinct impression of walking through a dream that somebody else has very carefully furnished. The midway alone — the stalls, the lights, the smell of roasting nuts and something sweeter underneath — held this correspondent for a full quarter-hour before the bell rang for the main performance.

The programme itself defies easy summary, but no account of the evening could pass without dwelling at length on Miss Vale, who joined the circus as its headline act and, this past spring, became Mrs. Castelliano. She performs the high-wire entirely without a net. It must be stated plainly: entirely without a net. She moved across the wire with such unhurried sureness that the audience, which had been holding its collective breath since her first step, forgot by the midpoint that breath was something they required. When she reached the far platform and turned to face the tent — arms open, as though greeting an old friend — the applause that erupted felt less like approval than release.

When asked afterward how she manages the fear, Miss Vale smiled in a manner that suggested the question had never quite applied to her. "The wire does not frighten me," she said. "I know exactly where it is. It is the ground I don't think about." She wore a small gold ring alongside her wedding band — a celestial chart, she explained, of the night sky on the evening she and Orlando first spoke. Her twin brother Oberon, who watches from the wings each night and has, by all accounts, watched every performance she has ever given, declined to be interviewed but offered a nod of greeting that managed to communicate a great deal.

The Observatory remains in residence through the end of the month. This correspondent will not pretend to objectivity: the tickets are worth whatever they ask for them. Go twice if you are able. The second time, you will notice what you missed while being astonished by the first thing.