My wife and I did not experience anything like the trauma of war that soldiers in Gaza do, or that Gazans experience, or what the people of Iran must have felt when night after night, day after day, the skies were totally controlled by the Israeli Air Force.
I didn't really actively start listening to Econtalk until about 2017, but I think I lucked into the prime of Russ Roberts. What did I do before that? He's one of the treasures of civilisation.
Russ – Great column…..Inspired me to remember the first time I heard “Va Pensiero.”
I was in Tijuana writing a chapter for my second book on the very rich opera/classical music scene in that city.
True story. They literally imported an orchestra from Russia after the end of the Soviet Union and those musicians began Tijuana’s first music conservatory. Opera followed.
Opera fans were like underground guerrillas in Tijuana, where most of the music was techno, hip-hop, heavy metal, mariachi – whatever gringo tourists wanted. But opera fans found each other, and the orchestra created great musicians.
So Tijuana’s opera scene was quite robust by the time I was writing. Lots of kids learning to sing, etc. In my chapter I opened with the Tijuana Opera Company’s performance of Pagliacci.
Anyway, I wrote a long chapter about this fascinating thing. But I was still looking for an ending. The opera company’s Pagliacci had finished up two days before.
I went to a chorus rehearsal one night in a slum neighborhood near the border, still unsettled that I had no natural ending to the piece.
I was standing alone out on the street, 9pm in Tijuana, Sunday night, the border wall 75 yards away, a dog barking at an occasional car going by on a street a half block away. When suddenly the chorus began to sing “Va Pensiero.”
It was the most beautiful thing. The voices filtered out onto the street, over my head, and across the neighborhood. It was as if I could almost see the musical line each voice was producing.
A car with a low-hanging exhaust pipe came along, the pipe sparking as it dragged on the street. Dogs ran after it, and the singers’ majestic melody swelled and I was just taken away.
That was my ending.
(It’s in my second book, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration, in which I argue that virtually every Mexican immigrant has a story worth of its own opera.)
Final note: Italians took Nabucco and that song as nationalist encouragement, to recover their own country. So while I understand your initial concern, it's actually got some fairly potent connections to current day, you mind find.
When Verdi died, he was a national hero, due in good measure to Nabucco.
Some 300,000 people lined the streets of Milan (I think) and stood as the cart carrying his coffin slowly passed, pulled by six horses.
And as it moved along, hundreds of thousands Italians, in tears, began to sing “Va Pensiero,” their voices carrying across the town.
Va Pensiero, the Hebrew chorus from Verdi’s Nabucco, became the unofficial national anthem of the Italians seeking to unify their divided land. They saw the Jewish captives in Babylon as similar to the Italians longing to create their own independent state.
I didn't really actively start listening to Econtalk until about 2017, but I think I lucked into the prime of Russ Roberts. What did I do before that? He's one of the treasures of civilisation.
You are a beautiful writer, Russ. Thanks for taking us to Verona with you.
Russ – Great column…..Inspired me to remember the first time I heard “Va Pensiero.”
I was in Tijuana writing a chapter for my second book on the very rich opera/classical music scene in that city.
True story. They literally imported an orchestra from Russia after the end of the Soviet Union and those musicians began Tijuana’s first music conservatory. Opera followed.
Opera fans were like underground guerrillas in Tijuana, where most of the music was techno, hip-hop, heavy metal, mariachi – whatever gringo tourists wanted. But opera fans found each other, and the orchestra created great musicians.
So Tijuana’s opera scene was quite robust by the time I was writing. Lots of kids learning to sing, etc. In my chapter I opened with the Tijuana Opera Company’s performance of Pagliacci.
Anyway, I wrote a long chapter about this fascinating thing. But I was still looking for an ending. The opera company’s Pagliacci had finished up two days before.
I went to a chorus rehearsal one night in a slum neighborhood near the border, still unsettled that I had no natural ending to the piece.
I was standing alone out on the street, 9pm in Tijuana, Sunday night, the border wall 75 yards away, a dog barking at an occasional car going by on a street a half block away. When suddenly the chorus began to sing “Va Pensiero.”
It was the most beautiful thing. The voices filtered out onto the street, over my head, and across the neighborhood. It was as if I could almost see the musical line each voice was producing.
A car with a low-hanging exhaust pipe came along, the pipe sparking as it dragged on the street. Dogs ran after it, and the singers’ majestic melody swelled and I was just taken away.
That was my ending.
(It’s in my second book, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration, in which I argue that virtually every Mexican immigrant has a story worth of its own opera.)
Final note: Italians took Nabucco and that song as nationalist encouragement, to recover their own country. So while I understand your initial concern, it's actually got some fairly potent connections to current day, you mind find.
When Verdi died, he was a national hero, due in good measure to Nabucco.
Some 300,000 people lined the streets of Milan (I think) and stood as the cart carrying his coffin slowly passed, pulled by six horses.
And as it moved along, hundreds of thousands Italians, in tears, began to sing “Va Pensiero,” their voices carrying across the town.
Man, to have been there that day!
God bless.
Va Pensiero, the Hebrew chorus from Verdi’s Nabucco, became the unofficial national anthem of the Italians seeking to unify their divided land. They saw the Jewish captives in Babylon as similar to the Italians longing to create their own independent state.
Thanks Russ, for another unique perspective especially valuable for people like me, with great interest in the region but living far away.
Well done. Vivid descriptions.
🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
Thank You