Ascoltando

[tmcg]

I've been cramming Italian in preparation for going to Tuscany, Florence, and Venice, and yesterday I had the coolest experience: I listened to an aria I downloaded (so my monthly emusic allotment wouldn't go to waste) and understood fifty percent of what I was hearing. When I looked at a transcription of the Italian, my comprehension went up to eighty percent. (I forgave myself for not knowing the verb for "to dissolve"; it doesn't appear on a whole lot of "most frequently used verbs" lists.) Understanding what they're singing, directly and without resorting to summaries or paraphrasings or having to follow along the English side of the libretto line by line--what a concept!

It was Jussi Bjoerling singing "Nessun Dorma," which by the way is like a shot of heroin directly into the aesthetic pleasure center of the brain. Or maybe adrenaline and soma? Was that the stuff Vila drank on Blake's 7?

I now fully appreciate the beauty of the line Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio che ti fa mia ("And my kiss will dissolve the silence that makes you mine"). And thanks to this translation (by Mark D. Lew, from back in 1997...god I love the Internet), the verb "to set" now gives me a most pleasurable hit of etymology-as-poetry.

My plan was to crowbar into my head as much Italian as I could, just to help us get around while we're there, and then let it go and try to regain my onetime fluency in Spanish. But I'm really kind of loving the language, and when I get back I think I'd like to finish Level 2 of the Rosetta Stone course I've been doing, and enjoy this newly unfiltered experience of Italian opera for a little longer.

Comments

[ferragus.livejournal.com]

I was thing of you this weekend as I listened to "The Splendid Table" on NPR. The host, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, was talking about the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and all the great food you can get there.

You're trip is no doubt already planned, but the show is still worth a listen. Archived version is up at http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/listings/ (October 14th) and you can catch part two this weekend.

Have fun!

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

I will have a listen, thank you! :)

[thirdstreet.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful way to practice a language. I understand bits and pieces of spoken Italian and can cobble together the meaning of a newspaper or magazine article (thanks to speaking French and having taken two semesters of Latin at uiniversity). I would love to have your facility though. I bet the mere cadence of it inspires you to write differently.

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

The weirdest thing is that during the week I spent most intensively studying, all kinds of wires got crossed in my head, and my English suffered. Whatever was happening, it straightened out by itself after a few days, but it was fascinating while it was going on. I've studied a bunch of other languages, but I've never tried to cram so much of one in during so short a period before. Long-term effects remain to be seen....

I do fully expect to draw a complete blank at some point when someone's talking to me, the way I did at that restaurant checkout during World Fantasy in Montreal. I don't know if you remember that, but I still laugh about it. I swear that all I heard was noise; I didn't even recognize that human speech was going on!

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

But, do the lyrics to the operas actually make any more sense?!!! Just because you can interpret the words, doesn't mean that there's actual information content there that makes sense! (I've heard opera afficionadoes claiming that NOBODY understands what's going in Die (Der?) Fliedermaus!