About Opera
Geoffrey Brock
Fuggirmi io sol non so
here it's high art. After we find our seats,
silence our cells and smooth our
ruffled2 minds,
and just before the curtains rise, houselights
go out. We vanish, and before our eyes
adjust, a splendid spectacle begins
in which we're borne, again, into the lives
of others -- figures whose shaded joys and pains
might be, for these three hours, ours. Yet
what can we hope to understand of them?
Words in a strange, old tongue (il fazzoletto!)
shine through the wordless music as through a scrim
words whose sources are masks, mouths
gaping5 wide.
Still, some intelligence like a welder's current
leaps the orchestra pit (where shadows hide
that pulsing drum, those lacerating strings),
and something is spilling, something even grander,
perhaps, than life, from the woman who now sings,
now dies, as passion fills white space around her,
fills us, and tears are spilling down our faces --
there's too much light, it's all too brightly lit!
Kind curtains fall, and a governed dark replaces
all light but the glow of the pages in the pit.
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