About Opera

Geoffrey Brock

Fuggirmi io sol non so

In the real world, lighting is undesigned;

here it's high art. After we find our seats,

silence our cells and smooth our ruffled 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

by turns opaque and blindingly transparent --

words whose sources are masks, mouths gaping 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.