Puccini and Jussi Björling and being inside music

When I was in my teens I used to listen to Italian opera all the time. I hadn't forgotten just how good Puccini was at what he did, or how good the singers are, but I had forgotten details of this. It's a set of duets, with the great Jussi Björling singing Puccini, Verdi, and Bizet. (I got an iPod for my birthday and I'm listening to all sorts of things I haven't listened to for ages).

Listening to one of these duets - from the first act of Tosca - I've just been admiring how good Jussi Bjoerling was.

The character he's playing is an artist, currently painting a fresco* on the wall of a church. He is interrupted, first by a political fugitive, to whom he is sympathetic, and then by his girlfriend, Tosca. He can't tell her the fugitive is hiding there, because that would be a very bad idea, so he has to lie about the rustling sound she's just heard, but he also has to convince her (perfectly truthfully) that he loves her and the rustling sound wasn't another woman, and specifically not the other woman who actually appears in his work-in-progress. His conversation with her is the duet.

It's not only brilliant singing, producing these wonderful tunes. He makes a clear difference in his voice when the character is lying, when he's telling the truth, and when he's telling the truth and he's totally in love with this woman but he really really wishes she would go away, and he can't make her do that. The combination of all these things is different for every line, and I think it's a wonderful piece of vocal acting.

I think the opportunity to be inside tango music, by dancing it, has hugely improved my appreciation of this sort of music too. It's a closely related style, so it's not surprising. I should listen to some more and see what I find. It's certainly true that because I used to sing very simple Renaissance church music in a choir, Spem in Alium is a lot more to me than just an amazing wall of sound. It doesn't matter that I can't sing Spem in Alium.

I always had the strong impression - based on his operas alone, as I never went into the facts of his life - that Puccini actually liked women as people, which led me to like him more in return. I did read somewhere that women generally liked him too.

* It has to be a fresco because you don't paint an oil painting in the place it's going to go.