The sweet sound hits me...

As the older brother of an aspiring opera singer, I found the recent New Yorker profile of Natalie Dessay fascinating. What a weird world, opera. But the profile came out at a handy time, as I just showed one of my classes the YouTube video of Dessay singing the Lucia Mad scene.

I am not an opera buff, by any measure. I know enough to teach it in a history survey, and to appreciate what my sister does. The only corners of the operatic repertoire about which I have a more intimate knowledge are certain twentieth-century works (particularly Berg, Britten, Adams, Glass), and also Wagner. The latter is the result of a grad school seminar, and also a certain amount of cultural inheritance from a Wagnerian grandfather. I can't say that I like Wagner; indeed, I often feel revulsion. And yet, when it comes time to teach Wagner this semester, I have three different versions of Tristan in my personal DVD collection to choose between. So, yeah.