Melodies of Love and Death - Opera Senza Parole

“Melodies of Love and Death”, “Opera Senza Parole”... what remains of the famous arias if the singers hand over their notes to their colleagues the instrumentalists? Opera is theatre, drama, driven by stories, action, the turbulent emotions of people: the passion of lovers, the vengeance of enemies. Can a violin make love to a cello? Can a piano take vengeance on strings? But, then, there is a reason the great composers are immortal. Their melodies, harmonies and rhythms transcend the concrete fact of the plot and lend to the drama in words the abstraction of the primal themes of human existence as it turns inexorably toward pitiful failure. And we listeners can’t get enough of it! We want to hear all these melodies time and again, and through them, experience what the unfortunate opera personages experience. We want to share in the passion of Love, tremble before the terrors of Death. All too often, we hardly know what an aria is literally about, and, strangely enough, we are often content to understand little or nothing of all the lyrical words, whether they are simple doggerel or poetry of the highest literary quality—the music tells the whole story!" (arranger Bob Zimmerman in the linernotes of this cd