Long time no see! Oh, well. No one reads this anyway!
This is the most hilariously awesome song ever!
Oh, my God. This song is so good. It's actually probably better when Pavarotti or someone really intense and/or famous sings it, but the version by Mario Lanza came up on shuffle so we'll go with that.
Anyway, this is the aria from Pagliacci that everyone knows. This has long been my favorite opera and I just found out Netflix has the 1941 version with Gigli that I love so much, so this is in celebration. Here's a translation of the lyrics because they're absolutely beautiful. Prior to this, the main character had discovered his wife was cheating on him, but still had to perform because "the show must go on."
Play the part! Grabbed by delirium,
I know no longer what I say
or what I'm doing
And yet it's necessary, force yourself!
Bah! aren't you a man?
You're the clown!
Put on the costume
and white powder on your face
The public's paying and wants to have a laugh.
If Arlecchino runs off with Colombina
laugh, clown and everyone will applaud.
Change into laughs the spasms and the tears;
into a grimace the sobbing and the pain.
Laugh, clown,
of your broken love.
Laugh of the pain that poisons your heart.
Don't tell me you're not crying.
"I discovered long ago in collecting and classifying marine animals that what I found was closely intermeshed with how I felt at that moment. External reality has a way of being not so external after all."
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
One of my favorite things about music is how every time I listen to a song, I feel differently about it.
I've heard this song at least twenty times, but it wasn't until last night that it dug its way into my heart, built a nest, and made itself at home in my ventricles and atria. Until then, it was simply another tune on an album I only enjoyed. Now it's a one I can't stop listening to and mulling over.
I guess the external reality of everything I was feeling on Saturday night, driving home in the pitch black night, was the perfect setting.
