…because it’s a perfect synergy. It’s not just the combination of the words and music, but it’s also the SOUND of the words, the way certain syllables can convey more meaning than the words of which they are a part.
…because “nessun dorma” has a gravity that “nobody sleeps” just doesn’t have. One of those phrases sounds like the beginning of an infomercial for a sleep-aid, and the other one is “nessun dorma.”
…because La Mamma Morta by Humberto Giordano will likely bring you to tears – even if you don’t understand a word of Italian. (If you look for the song, look for the version sung by Maria Callas.)
The first time I heard opera – really heard it – I was 13. The building melodic themes, the soaring voices, the depth of emotion in the singers’ voices evoked something I previously hadn’t felt. Opera had always been boring, impossible to understand, and completely unattainable. I didn’t know anything about it, and I didn’t really care to. Honestly, how much occasion does a pre-teen have to consider the complexities of opera? But that summer night in 1990, I didn’t have to consider anything, I didn’t have to access anything, and I didn’t have to speak Italian. In the most unexpected and exhilerating way, listening to opera that night felt like it was considering, accessing, and speaking to ME.
Strictly speaking, Pavarotti wasn’t singing an operatic aria, he was singing a song from the early 1900s in an operatic style, but I didn’t know that at the time. I had no idea what the song was about. I didn’t understand a lick of Italian, and I had no intention of liking the music. But there it was, rising, inevitably, out of the speakers of our TV, toward my ears, and into every cell in my body.
The song was wistful, and melancholy. Pavarotti’s giant bearded face conveyed both a stout resolve, and a sad hopefulness. The song flutters lightly at the beginning, then builds layers of atmosphere; it peaks and falls back again, gently to the sweet flutter of the beginning. Then it builds again. This time the peak is strong and sad, it is rich and saturated with such clear emotion that it almost feels as though we’re listening to a private note, or prayer. It felt familiar and empowering, but was also intoxicating and exotic. My brain couldn’t understand a thing, but the spirit of the song sang to my own, and it felt like something was healing and breaking at the same time.
And although the song was clearly a sad one, I didn’t feel sad after the song ended. On the contrary, I felt a rush of energy, of elation, of a complete and commanding need to hear more, a lot, for a long time. I discovered Italian. I discovered Puccini and Tosca and Turandot, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, Giordano’s Andrea Chenier, and Verdi and La Traviata. These stories are filled with sometimes ridiculously funny scenarios, melodramatic betrayals, and the most honest access to sweeping human emotion of any art form. The people who are masters of this kind of music are bestowed with an ability to sing that goes beyond technical accuracy, that goes beyond perfect execution. To sing opera is to voice the human condition: often magnified, in superb hyperbole, but accurate and perfect in its irony, its purposeful exaggerations, and its timeless melodies.
Operas and their arias should be recategorized as human imperatives. Opera can feed your spirit as it fills your ear. It grants you access to untold millions of people who have long since shuffled off this mortal coil with whom you might not otherwise share anything in common. Opera can be just as quiet and solitary as it can lead parades and revolutions. But mostly, it inspires me because it’s quite simply beautiful.
