A Breast of Fresh Songs...
Oct 01 '08
The Bottom Line Risqué license Alert: a few anatomical songs to lift the spirit (and the flesh that holds it) of those affected by breast cancer
"Music has the power to enchant even the roughest of people."
- William Congreve, The Mourning Bride
Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a little shout out from Epinions' operatic corner to all those afflicted and/or affected by the disease is in order. I'm afraid I don't know much about BC... And I don't think that you BC-afflicted guys and gals would be looking to an opera-fanatic for any advice on how to deal with the crabby thing anyway.
But whether you like opera or not is neither here nor there. The breast is a finickily important organ to us all.... After all, we aren't lumped up into the Class Mammalia in the zoological taxonomy for no good reason. From the first moment each of us bursted out from our mother's womb, one of the first thoughts to strike our young imagination may very well be...
'O Is There Not One Maiden Breast?'
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=let3J9KGu8U )
...Well... perhaps not exactly in that context... but sooner or later (I hope) you do get there eventually. As we blossom into adulthood, some of us eventually find ourselves... er.. more amply endowed in the pectoral region than we'd like. This is really nothing to be ashamed of. The condition has been around forever, and recorded by many eminent writers since ancient time. In fact, that the field of plastic surgery and the discovery of silicone didn't happen earlier must have been disappointing for many. Ovid's Tiresias (from Metamorphosis) would have greatly benefitted from it... and perhaps we would be breasted with more amusing operas about what the lactative lumps mean to our sense of identity than just...
Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tiresias (The Breasts of Tiresias)
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHkRYh6E2d4 )
Really, who among us wouldn't identify with the rebellious housewife, Thérese, who, in a fit of feministic passion, wills herself into manhood (causing her breasts to happily fly off as two bubbly balloons) and becomes a devastatingly flat-chested man called Tirésias. This prompts her...er... his.. husband into his own extreme anti-feministic fit by turning himself into a woman and starts bearing children... 40,049 of them in a single day!
If you want to know how it all ends, you'll just have to buy a recording of the thing, 'cause I'm not telling. ;oP Or better yet, if you live on the US East Coast, you can catch a performance of Poulenc's 'The Breasts of Tiresias' at the UNC Opera (University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill) on campus at Hill Hall Auditorium on November 21st and 22nd (2008, of course)!
Not everyone is disenchanted enough with their Grand Tetons to actually try to curse them off, however. In which case, finding the right support for the bosomy flesh is of the highest priority...
'Otto Titsling' ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqxWhBZXF8Q )
As I said before... I don't know much about breast cancer, though I do know something about cancer fighters in general. Aside from being astoundingly steely in their spirit, they also have this uncanny ability to find things to laugh about even in the darkest hours. Those of us who have never been so tried by such a physical rebellious are grateful to be able to witness how tough the human mind is through your experience. Some will prevail over it, and some won't... But as the wise saying goes; Everyone dies, but not all have truly lived. So I now leave you with a few video clips of operatic songs by opera singers who have traveled (or are traveling) this very same road you're on. Keep your chin up and sing on!
Kathleen Ferrier sings 'Blow the Wind Southerly' ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF7ibuEpx5s )
Susan Chilcott as Fiordiligi ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTFAUKzYXfo )
Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson as Sesto in Giulio Cesare in Egitto ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPqeCP9E5dI )
Dawn Upshaw as Zerlina ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQUXExa3uEE )
Ruth Ann Swenson as Gounod's Juliet ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md712C3ecu8 )
This essay is my entry to Laurashrti's 'Breast Cancer Awareness Write-Off' (http://www.epinions.com/content_5240365188).
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Member: Smorg
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