Four hands and an opera

Have you tried singing an aria? No, grazie, but long ago, I do remember mouthing the lyrics played in our phonograph, on long-playing (LP) vinyl records.

The records had the trademark image of a dog listening to a wind-up gramophone, his nose and ears open to “his master’s voice” or in Spanish, la voz de su amo. 

It was hard to ignore opera.  It was everywhere.  In airwaves, in movies including those crash-and-burn auto chases, in commercial ads, love songs, in ballets, on my dentist’s Ipod, and even when pressing the hold buttons on answering machines.  The themes and the plots are so realistic that any one can relate and be moved by them.  Like slices of life, it marks the sublime and the wretched, the peaks and the lows, and, in mushy terms, the agony and the ecstasy. 

Recently, I sat at CCP’s little theater with lights turned low with my heart taking off.  I was humming instinctively but in hush tones, aware of the two pianists playing heart-stopping, sometimes upbeat music on the ivory keys.  I called it opera without words.  The emphasis was on the tune, the melody as composed by Italian maestros Verdi, Puccini, and Donizetti and played by two pairs of nimble hands dubbed as Four Hands at the Opera.

While still fighting off jet lag, the Italian tandem of Antonella Vitelli and Luciano Bellini proved so adept at the piano that the audience was virtually transported to the castle of the Lamamoors in Scotland for Gaetano Donizetti’s tragic love story of Lucia.  Vitelli and Bellini mimicked the inflections and rhythms of what otherwise would have been sang by tenors and sopranos.

Next was Guiseppe Verdi’s Romance sans paroles (song without words) and La Traviata (the fallen woman) about a moribund courtesan and her undying love for a young man.

Did you know that La Traviata was adapted on the celluloid screen in the early 1930s entitled Camille that starred Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor?

But that was at least two decades before our generation.

The second half of the program opened with Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, a sample of comico buffa or comic opera.  Immediately, heads were bopping because of the all-too-well-known music that began with a quiet introduction and turned to a happy rush of surge and vigor.  The music was so catchy and foot-tapping that one can almost imagine a disgruntled gentleman/ guardian rushing to stop a scoundrel who was up to his sly, sneaky tricks again. 

Giaocomo Puccini’s Tosca followed and the mood switched to deceit and betrayal beyond the grave, consequently somber and grim.

The next number was Guiseppi Verdi’s Valzer in Fa Maggiore with a waltz-like tempo described by a Verdi fan as che bello.

The finale had Verdi’s La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny), another tragic affair of disguise and treachery.  I read that Forza is an opera that many old school Italian singers considered as jinx because it supposedly brought bad luck to anyone singing the aria “Morir, tremanda cosa” (to die, a momentous thing).  Rumor circulated that in singing the aria in Act 3, there was once a tenor who simply went silent and fell face down, motionless and dead.  For the same reason, tenor Luciano Pavarotti, known to be superstitious, avoided playing the role of Alvaro, the suitor of Leonora, for fear of ending up in a similar lifeless state. 

Four Hands was an evening of music and melodrama that captured the Italian attitude, character, and their culture.  It was a fine, lyrical way of celebrating the works of Verdi on the second centenary of his birth.  Listening to Luciano Bellini and Antonella Vitelli the duo pianistico italiano, brought home the message that opera music was universal.  It was not only for operaphiles and piano lovers but for anyone who loves music in its tuneful best.   

The concert was made possible through the joint efforts of the Italian Embassy and the Philippine Italian Association with Rustan’s, The Peninsula, and a host of associates and friends.  When Nedy Tantoco, president of the Philippine Italian Association, stood on stage to thank their co-sponsors, including nameless colleagues, she drew a chuckle from the audience when she remarked, “Fund-raising could never succeed (or be as fulfilling) without friends who remain patient, untiring and generous.”