2004-07-02 - 8:37 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Don't Let Me Down", Beatles

That song appeared in a dream I had last night, as the background music for a documentary-type short film someone had made about my family around the time I was in high school. Bizarre! So now it's stuck in my head.

Yesterday evening I went to Rittenhouse Square to eat an ice cream blend-in (pumpkin pie![1]) and hear some opera.

Wow.

It never fails to amaze me at what people can do with the human voice. It is nothing short of stunning. I am incredibly grateful that I have enough hearing left to be able to hear some of the strength and power and COLOR that opera singers' voices have. It's so beautiful. It makes me think of athletes, almost, because of how precisely controlled their singing is and yet how strong it is.

This was a "concert in the park" kinda thing, so there was a huge variety of people there. There were chairs set up, people were clogging the walkways, and despite the wet grass (it rained just before the concert), some people were picnicking, some with their kids. It was amusing to see the kids dancing around to the music. After every song, a bunch of girls in the audience hooted and hollered "WOOOOOOOOO!" in appreciation, to the amusement of the performers.

I know nothing about opera. I just like people who can sing well, so I went. I fell in love with all of them while I was there -- I am such a sucker for people who can sing. I just wish there was no orchestra, or that they had been quieter, so I could hear just the voices better.

There was one woman there, Eglise Gutierrez, who was doing some things with her voice that I had never heard before. She was trilling, and her voice would climb and then fall like water within a single syllable. Then she did something called the "Doll Song", where she sings the part of mechanical doll -- and acted like one, too, including winding down and needing to be wound back up by another singer with a huge silver key -- and she did things with her voice I had never even imagined. I was completely floored.

I found out later, after some Googling, that she is a coloratura soprano. Had a hell of a time finding out exactly what that meant, but I found out that "Coloratura is fast moving melismatic, and sometimes acrobatic singing." (Melismatic means "a passage of several notes sung to one syllable of text".) ACROBATIC singing. That's exactly what it sounded like.

One of the first romance novels I remember reading was "Mountain Laurel", by Jude Deveraux, way back in high school, I think. The heroine, nicknamed "La Reina" on the opera circuit, is a coloratura soprano and this is a VERY BIG DEAL in the book, the kind of thing opera fans talk about in hushed tones. Now I can see why.

(If you're interested in all the voice types, they're listed here. I had no idea they had specific names for different types of voices, or that they'd been categorized so minutely. I mean, they distinguish between sopranos based on whether they have a "light" sound or a "fuller" sound. NIFTY. I need to get some sort of "opera for dummies" book. I've always wondered what the quality is that makes a male voice distinguishable from a female's even when they're singing the same note.)

It was something of a magical evening for me. The weather was perfect, the voices were beautiful, and I walked for a while in the lovely evening, following a throng of people leaving the park. I love living here. :)

[1]Vanilla ice cream blended with pumpkin pie filling, cinnamon, and nutmeg, from the best ice cream store ever. Previous blend-ins mentioned here -- I always use vanilla, but they have at least ten flavors to mix with their hundred or so blend-in toppings -- were peanut butter with raspberries and a toasted coconut/cinnamon/almond combo.)

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