Farewell Luciano

I am in mourning. The man whose voice introduced me to opera has died. Luciano Pavarotti taught me to love Verdi and Puccini when I was too young to pronounce their names or the titles of their famous works. Every Saturday afternoon from the time I was 5 years old until I went away to college, my family would listen to opera on public radio. It's what Italian families do. We listen to opera, make ravioli, and talk in loud voices. I used to think the yelling was because of the hot-headed nature of our breed, but it was really because no one was willing to turn down the music. Now we're all hearing impaired.

My grandfather would sit in our kitchen with my parents, sipping red wine and playing cards. Occasionally, he would dance his way to the stove to take his turn at stirring the red sauce, singing as he went. I would peak around the corner to watch him. When he spied me I would run to him and we would dance in circles in front of the sink while Grandpa and Luciano sang La Boheme to me.

A few years later, when I was about to turn 8, the opera halted for a while. Grandpa had died, and it was just too difficult to hear the music that flowed in his veins. Saturdays were the worst. He wasn't there to stir the sauce, and he wasn't there to sing the tragic stories in the language of his parents. Luciano's partner had gone on without him. So the music stopped.

Then after several months, on a Saturday afternoon, my mother turned on the radio. La Boheme was playing. She sat down on the couch and listened for a few minutes and then began to weep. My dad, my sister and I gathered around her, and we all cried. It was as cleansing as it was sad. We needed Luciano to help us heal.

In high school my friends thought it was odd to listen to such things. My best friend tolerated it when she would come over because she thought my father looked suspiciously like Pavarotti. I had always thought so too.
Dad would say the resemblance ended with the beard, but that never stopped him from belting out a few bars during one of the great arias. I have always pretended that Dad's singing is terrible, but I adore it. He is completely comfortable playing Rodolfo for us - or Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. "If I Were a Rich Man" has always been one of his favorites, and he often used his Topol-esque qualities to remind us that he is "the father!" when the three women of our family would trample his authority. Again, it was probably the beard.


I have been fortunate to be married to a man who, although not Italian, has been willing to tolerate my family's traditions, including listening to opera when he would rather be wearing headphones cranked with The Beastie Boys. When we were newlyweds, he was in graduate school, and we were broke, Steve's grandmother gave us some money for Christmas with the stipulation that it could not be used to pay bills. So, we bought tickets to hear Pavarotti in concert. To this day, I have never heard anything as beautiful as his voice in person. His musical ability was nothing short of a miracle, and I heard it with my own ears. A couple of years after that, Steve and I had tickets to the last 3 Tenors concert, which was canceled. I knew then that would be my last chance to hear them together, but at least I got to hear the best one when he was at his peak.

Ian's love of music has had me hopeful that he would learn to enjoy opera as I have, to be inspired by the beauty that comes from a well-trained, highly skilled voice. Ian can carry a tune quite well for a kid. Unfortunately, he find the sopranos somewhat grating on his sensory system. I can't blame him, really. But the great tenors - Caruso, Pavarotti, Carreras, Domingo - the power they bring to a stage simply by breathing air is what makes children dream they can do great things. I want Ian to believe life is that easy so he will aspire to greatness.

Ian will turn 8 in a few weeks. Even though he will never attend a Pavarotti concert or dance with his great-grandfather in the kitchen, he will still be able to sit on the couch at my parents' house and listen to opera with them. Maybe he will learn to love it like I do, or at least appreciate the physics of making music with the vocal chords. He already loves my mother's red sauce and likes to stir. And he thinks my father is the most brilliant man alive. What's more inspiring than that?