Crying in class

Tonight was the last meeting of my continuing education course in Opera. It has been completely, truly life-changing. From the very first night the class kindled a new passion, and now I want to buy a whole swag of $80 CDs and subscribe to the entire season of Opera Australia in the winter for $2000. (My new hobby could be an expensive hobby....)

Tonight the teacher spent the last hour in an exercise inspired by a now defunct web site called "The One Book List". Here's the blurb from that, and she asked people to bring in CDs that had played the same role in their relationship to opera:

"My proposal is this: I would like for each of you to decide on a single book that you would most like for the world to read for inclusion in the list. The book that, for you, was the most influential, or thought-provoking, or enjoyable, or moving, or philosophically powerful, or deep in some sense you cannot properly define, or any other criteria you wish to set."

- Paul Phillips

So people did. They brought in their personal favourites, or the first piece that made them interested in opera, or pieces that they had learned to appreciate differently from being in the class. Everyone stood and introduced the piece as the teacher cued it up, and so when you listened it was really beautiful, I kept wanting to turn around and smile at the selector and say, "Yes, yes, I can hear why it moved you, it is very beautiful, thank you." The genre being so emotional anyway, the combination of the pieces and the personal sentiments made it all very moving. The particular ones that made me teary were:

Placido Domingo, "Ch'ella mi creda libero e lontano" from Puccini, La Faniculla del West
Luciano Pavarotti, "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini, Turandot (lots of Puccini in the list, it's pure Romantic emotion after all, and can't help but make people emotional)
Maria Callas, "La mamma morta" from Andrea Chenier by Umberto Giordano (actually played off the Philadelphia soundtrack)
Marilyn Horne, "Mon coeur s'ouvre á ta voix" from Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saens

I'm sad that it's the last class, but I know that I will continue to pursue all of this on my own, and there's so much to learn! A whole lifetime of finding libretti and comparing singers and watching performances and developing preferences (I'm thinking a little Puccini will go a long way for me, since I'm more of a structuralist-modernist sort of gal and like mathematical precision in my music; and I think Cecilia Bartoli might already be my favourite soprano and it's not just because she features on The Sopranos soundtrack). To that end, on my way to the train station I dropped into a record store and picked up volume 2 of the ABC The Classic 100 Opera moments - not both volumes because I couldn't afford them, and volume 2 by accident because it was the first one I picked up in the rack. And guess what? First track is by my mate Monteverdi! So enough other people like early opera to vote him into position #51.

Ah! The first disc is playing through as we speak and there's a tenor reaching a point of high emotion for some reason or other (Puccini again, ten bucks says), and it makes my heart swell with joy.

What has happened to me? Maybe this is the music for people who no longer need a career direction....