Last week, in my Spanish class, we watched the wonderful movie, "Mer Adentro", which starred Javier Bardem. I loved it. But that's not what I'm going to talk about. (Though I probably will later....)
What I am going to talk about is mine and my sister's new affinity for a certain type of music I wasn't entirely...open to before seeing the movie. This type of music is opera.
I can't say that I was totally, hardcore anti-opera. My mom is a classical music fanatic, and I would have to be pretty pretentious to deny the merit of some of the stuff she's showed me over the years.
Opera just wasn't my music of choice. It's actually not my mom's either, but she recognizes and appreciates the beauty of some operas, which she passed on to my sisters and me. But let's just say that I certainly wasn't looking for a chance to delve deeper into the world of opera before last, well...Wednesday.
Last Wednesday, we started "Mer Adentro". It's a movie about a quadriplegic who wants to die, but can't kill himself. He wants to get the state to give him permission to have assisted suicide. So the movie is going on about his struggle, and at this one part, he says that sometimes, when he's alone, he flys to where he wants to be, and then he's content for a few minutes. They show this, and while he flys to the ocean and sees the woman he loves, I noticed a beautiful song playing.
When I got home, I looked it up. It was "Nessun Dorma" from the opera Turandot. I'd never heard of it, but I asked my mom. She said that it was beautiful, but we didn't own it in our vast collection of classical music. So I bought it. My mom also had me buy "Con Te Partiro" by Daniel Rodriguez. This is also beautiful.
A lot of people, upon hearing the word 'opera', wrinkle their noses. They pigeonhole opera to be this stuffy, boring, unpleasant experience. I wasn't totally in that category, but if I'd had to choose between listening to, say, Death Cab's new album or opera, I would've chosen the former....hands down.
However, for the past five days, all I have listened to is classical music and opera. Everything else now sounds sort of...trite. Especially this morning, when my sister happily played Chris Brown and Rhianna while we got ready. I was pained. I just wanted to turn on my opera.
I don't know what it is about those two pieces, along with the Bach Cello Suite No. 1, Debussy's Clair de Lune, Liszt's Liebestraume #3, and others, that captured me.
All I know is that they're beautiful. Listening to these songs with their amazing orchestration is fine with me, even though they're both in Italian, and the only Italian I recognize comes from a menu. My sister even said to me, whilst listening to "Nessun Dorma" (what, no Fergie?) something interesting. She said, "Ok, don't laugh at me, even though I would definitely laugh at you if you said this to me...but this song is so pretty. It's painfully pretty. Like, if I saw or thought about something sad right now, I'd probably cry."
And you know what? I probably would have laughed at her had she not hit the nail on the head. It is painfully beautiful. It's so pretty.
I can't say enough about it.
