Max's Musings

M'appari, Tutt' Amor

M'appari, Tutt' Amor

It's Valentine's Day, so of course I wanted to list of a love song as for today's entry in "The Soundtrack of Your Life" .

There are so many to choose from! There's a whole list of songs that I considered at the bottom of this blog. The one I chose is kind of obscure, an aria from Frederich von Flowtow's opera Martha. You'll recognize it when you hear Pavarottie singing it  , even if you're not familiar with the composer or the opera. But Pavarotti's performance isn't what motivated this choice. It's another performance, in a movie.

It could have been the way Hitchcock used the aria in Rear Window. In that movie, the aria is whistled as part of the background noise as the wheel-chair bound L.P. Jeffries ("Jeff"), played by Jimmy Stewart, spies on his neighbors through the window of his apartment. It's the backdrop as the various characters--Miss Torso, the composer, and others--go about their nightly routines. It's especially poignant as Miss Lonely Hearts primps for her fantasy dinner date. Eventually, the murderer Thorwald, played by Raymond Burr in his pre-Perrry Mason days, appears and the song and the bittersweet romance it invokes turns threatening.

Yeah, it could have been that scene, but it wasn't.

I could cite Ulysses, where Joyce references the song in several places. It figures prominently in the "Sirens" scene, for example, where the music is being played inside the Ormond Hotel where Bloom is exchanging amorous letters with his mistress, Martha.

Yeah, Ulysses references could have been what motivated the song's choice, but they weren't.

Instead, I chose a scene from the coming-of-age movie Breaking Away.

In this movie, four high school slackers in Bloomington Indiana find inspiration and themselves in a local bike race. The layered screenplay won Steve Tesich an Oscar, and the movie earned four more nominations. In an amazing performance, Dennis Christopher stars as Dave Stohler, a rather nerdy young man with many obsessions. There's bike racing, of course, but he also has longing for a large and close family, expressed in a desire to be "Italian." He's also obsessed with a coed he chances to see on the Indiana University campus, and it's in that forlorn chance at romance that the themes of the movie and the character's obsessions intersect.

The scene in the movie that inspired this choice for my soundtrack is the one where Christopher's character serenedes his love interest outside her room on campus. There's a corresponding scene that the director intercuts with the serenade, where Stohler's parents have a romantic moment when his mother puts a recording of the song on their phonograph. We see the closeness of his family and the love his parents share, juxtoposed with the romance that Stohler yearns for.

Here's a clip from the movie where Christopher, as Stohler, does a credible job singing the aria. At least, I think it's Christopher singing--that's what IMDB says in the credits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVXvjKv1d50

The movie itself is well worth watching. The script is great, but the cast and the perfmances are stellar. It's another one of those movies with the perfect combination of artistic talent coming together to produce a masterpiece.

The song is best known in its Italian translation, possibly due to Caruso's early recordings. But the original opera is in German, by a German composer. The original German title, Ach! so fromm, ach! so traut, doesn't sound nearly so romantic. Of course, it adds an element of irony that the Italian-obsessed Stohler would choose a song from a German opera to serenade his love love interest.

Lyrics
Lyrics to M'appari, Tutt' Amor in Italian and with an English translation
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/m039-appari-she-appeared-me.html

Here are the original German lyrics.
https://opera-cat.livejournal.com/8692.html

Some alternative love songs
Just an Old-Fashioned Love Song, Three Dog Night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oiXpHojBjg

I'll have to say I love you in a song, Jim Croce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Vn17S37_Y

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, The Platters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2di83WAOhU

Unchained Melody, Righteous Brothers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiyq2xrSI0

For Emily, Wherever I may Find Her, Simon and Garfunkel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVaisTSsDVA

Dream a Little Dream of Me, sung by Momma Cass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ0PZRYin2s

We've Only Just Begun, sung by Karen Carpenter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VQX2Xn7tI

For the Longest Time, Billy Joel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XgQhMPeEQ