Ungrateful Dorilla
I was in a large music store this week, having scouted out a copy of Pixar’s Cars for Toddler-Lighting McQueen being his latest object of worship.
Also picked up a copy of Season Four of Grey’s (rainy weekend’s entertainment), the new Indigo Girl’s CD and the best of all Handel duets and arias by contralto Sara Mingardo and soprano Sandrine Piau. These two are the superstars of the baroque opera scene and I was pretty staggered to find it in our local store which usually stacks up and sells cheap the Classic FM snoozle compilations, and “crossover artists.”
Mingardo was a landmark musical icon for me because I heard her sing when I was at one of my lowest points. Over a decade ago, I was in Rome. Over the top, flamboyant, baroque Rome. I was there for archival research, holed up in a monastic cell of a study in a high academy, with daily penitentiary trips to Vatican Archives and Library.
I was being hothoused. I was downing daily export strength gin martinis, sitting at long and late dinners having erudite, and oftentimes barbed and competitive conversation with scholars and artists, and spending even later hours in the academy’s haunted library. It was a heady mix.
While my research was progressing better than I could have dreamed, the relationship I was in was faltering. My appalling distracted phone manner was proving disasterous. I, at least, had enough sensitivity to recognise that my then girlfriend was holding back. But I accepted her verbal reassurances as there was little else I felt I could do with some thousands of miles separating us.
While I feared our growing apart, I was even more tested by realising I was becoming fast infatuated with another person at the academy. It was shocking as I was invariably even-keeled of temperament. It was both horrifying and discomforting. And yet, I felt like someone who had been somnabulant for years and had finally awoken. The atmosphere where I worked, studied and lived was febrile, brittle and intoxicating.
For relief, I walked alone out to a concert one winter evening in Rome. I needed the space to process the potential train wreck I could feel fast approaching. As I walked through the Villa Borghese, I ordered up in my head all the rationalisations I needed to justify staying in a relationship that no longer satisfied my needs. The subconscious wish for change fizzled out under the focus of calming logic. I firmly told myself that my current romantic dilemma had no mileage and that it was best consigned to unrequited. I would stick to the practised script and make loyalty the better virtue. I was to be as unwavering as the cypresses which lined the dimly lit paths along which I walked.
Rome had a traditional festival during February in honour of Santa Cecilia, patron saint of music. The free concerts were usually excellent and were held in baroque and crumbling churches that litter the city. That night the church was staggeringly packed, and the usually freezing venue was warmed by the number of bodies huddled in. I sat in a pew knocking knees with middle-aged Italian men in camel coats and red scarves.
Mingardo sang the Vivaldi aria, “Cessate, omai cessate.” I am not particularly outwardly demonstrative but as she sang, I wept. She sang this cycle of regret and frustration and her singing made papable all the pent up agony I had tried to suppress over the past weeks. She sang and I cried for my loss of resolve and in bewilderment that love could make me so unhappy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaNLyFZH_n0&feature=PlayList&p=1C415657F265ED44&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=15
Also picked up a copy of Season Four of Grey’s (rainy weekend’s entertainment), the new Indigo Girl’s CD and the best of all Handel duets and arias by contralto Sara Mingardo and soprano Sandrine Piau. These two are the superstars of the baroque opera scene and I was pretty staggered to find it in our local store which usually stacks up and sells cheap the Classic FM snoozle compilations, and “crossover artists.”
Mingardo was a landmark musical icon for me because I heard her sing when I was at one of my lowest points. Over a decade ago, I was in Rome. Over the top, flamboyant, baroque Rome. I was there for archival research, holed up in a monastic cell of a study in a high academy, with daily penitentiary trips to Vatican Archives and Library.
I was being hothoused. I was downing daily export strength gin martinis, sitting at long and late dinners having erudite, and oftentimes barbed and competitive conversation with scholars and artists, and spending even later hours in the academy’s haunted library. It was a heady mix.
While my research was progressing better than I could have dreamed, the relationship I was in was faltering. My appalling distracted phone manner was proving disasterous. I, at least, had enough sensitivity to recognise that my then girlfriend was holding back. But I accepted her verbal reassurances as there was little else I felt I could do with some thousands of miles separating us.
While I feared our growing apart, I was even more tested by realising I was becoming fast infatuated with another person at the academy. It was shocking as I was invariably even-keeled of temperament. It was both horrifying and discomforting. And yet, I felt like someone who had been somnabulant for years and had finally awoken. The atmosphere where I worked, studied and lived was febrile, brittle and intoxicating.
For relief, I walked alone out to a concert one winter evening in Rome. I needed the space to process the potential train wreck I could feel fast approaching. As I walked through the Villa Borghese, I ordered up in my head all the rationalisations I needed to justify staying in a relationship that no longer satisfied my needs. The subconscious wish for change fizzled out under the focus of calming logic. I firmly told myself that my current romantic dilemma had no mileage and that it was best consigned to unrequited. I would stick to the practised script and make loyalty the better virtue. I was to be as unwavering as the cypresses which lined the dimly lit paths along which I walked.
Rome had a traditional festival during February in honour of Santa Cecilia, patron saint of music. The free concerts were usually excellent and were held in baroque and crumbling churches that litter the city. That night the church was staggeringly packed, and the usually freezing venue was warmed by the number of bodies huddled in. I sat in a pew knocking knees with middle-aged Italian men in camel coats and red scarves.
Mingardo sang the Vivaldi aria, “Cessate, omai cessate.” I am not particularly outwardly demonstrative but as she sang, I wept. She sang this cycle of regret and frustration and her singing made papable all the pent up agony I had tried to suppress over the past weeks. She sang and I cried for my loss of resolve and in bewilderment that love could make me so unhappy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaNLyFZH_n0&feature=PlayList&p=1C415657F265ED44&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=15