Venice, 23 November 2025 – The Night the Glass Harp Conquered St Mark’s Square

It began with water and crystal.

David Gilmour, wrapped in a dark coat against the November chill, had slipped out of the Danieli Hotel just after sunset. No security tail, no entourage; just Polly, his wife, and the soft slap of canal waves against stone. They were wandering the calli behind the Piazza San Marco when the sound stopped them cold: pure, liquid notes rising from a row of wine glasses filled to different levels, stroked by wet fingertips. A glass harp, played by a wiry Venetian street musician named Luca Moretti, 29, who had been performing there every evening since he was sixteen.

Gilmour stood motionless for the entire piece (an aching arrangement of “Je te veux” by Erik Satie that floated over the heads of tourists like moonlight on the lagoon). When the last note dissolved, the small crowd applauded politely and moved on. Luca began packing his thirty tuned goblets into felt-lined cases.

That was the moment David stepped forward.

“Scusi,” he said in careful Italian, “do you want to play with us tomorrow night?”
He tilted his head toward the immense stage dominating the center of St Mark’s Square, where crews were still rigging lights for the final show of his Luck and Strange European tour. “On that stage. With me.”

Luca laughed, assuming it was a joke. Tourists sometimes pretended to be famous. Then he looked up and saw the eyes (those unmistakable pale-blue Gilmour eyes) and the black Strat slung low on the shoulder under the coat.

“…Signore Gilmour?”
David smiled the half-smile that has launched a billion air-guitar solos. “You play this,” he said, tapping one of the crystal rims so it rang like a distant bell, “I’ll pay you. Properly. And you’ll have the best seat in Venice.”

Luca’s answer came out as a stunned whisper: “È una buona idea.”

Twenty-four hours later, 8,000 people packed the Piazza under a cold, star-drenched sky. The basilica’s golden mosaics glowed behind the stage; the Campanile stood like a silent witness. Gilmour’s set had already been seismic (“Fat Old Sun” stretched to twelve minutes, “Comfortably Numb” detonated into the Venetian night), when he suddenly hushed the band with a raised hand.

“I met someone yesterday,” he told the crowd, voice soft but carrying to the back arches. “He makes music with water and glass. I thought we should share the square with him tonight.”

The audience turned as one toward stage left. A roadie wheeled out a long table draped in black velvet. On it: thirty-five crystal glasses, each filled to a precise level with San Pellegrino (Luca had insisted on Venetian water). A single spotlight found the young busker, now dressed in a simple black shirt, hands trembling as he took his place.

David leaned into the mic. “This is Luca Moretti. And this… is ‘Wish You Were Here’ like you’ve never heard it.”

The band dropped out. Only Gilmour’s acoustic and Guy Pratt’s subtle bass remained. Then Luca began.

The first note (a pure, ringing G) hung in the air like a drop of liquid starlight. Another followed, then another, weaving the famous opening riff in shimmering harmonics that danced across the piazza and bounced off five centuries of stone. When Gilmour started singing, his voice cracked just slightly (not from age, but from wonder).

So… so you think you can tell…
Heaven from hell… blue skies from pain…

Every time he reached the instrumental response, Luca answered with cascading runs of crystal that sounded like angels crying into the Grand Canal. The crowd was utterly silent; you could hear the water lapping at the mooring posts a hundred meters away.

Halfway through, Gilmour stepped back entirely and let Luca solo. Eight thousand phones lowered. For forty-five seconds the only sound in one of the most famous squares on earth was a street musician and his glasses. When David returned for the final verse, tears were streaming down more than one Venetian cheek.

The song ended on a single sustained high A that seemed to hover forever before dissolving into the night. Then the piazza erupted (not the polite applause of tourists, but the roar of people who had just witnessed something impossible).

Gilmour hugged Luca like a brother. “Thank you,” he said simply. Luca, speechless, could only nod.

Later, backstage on the wooden deck of Gilmour’s houseboat studio moored in the Giudecca, Luca finally found his voice. “I thought tomorrow I would be back on the same corner with my hat on the ground. Instead I played for the whole world.”

David poured him a glass (real prosecco this time) and clinked it against one of Luca’s crystal goblets. “The world was always listening,” he said. “We just gave it a bigger window tonight.”

By morning the clip was everywhere: 25 million views in twelve hours, headlines from Rolling Stone to Corriere della Sera (“Il Miracolo di San Marco”). Offers flooded in for Luca (record deals, festival bookings, a TED Talk), but he turned most down. He still plays the same corner most evenings. Only now, among the thirty-five glasses, one is engraved in tiny script on the base:

“For the night the Square sang with water. – D.G.”

And sometimes, when the moon is full and the tourists have gone, Venetians swear they can still hear it: a faint, crystalline echo of “Wish You Were Here” drifting across the water, reminding everyone that magic doesn’t need a stage the size of St Mark’s.

Sometimes it just needs someone willing to listen.