The Passmore Gulag Fun Park

Il Lamento di Frederico...

That the poor shephard boy could sleep!. Oh, my, those Italians know how to slay your heart.

Francesco Cilea composed Il Lamento di Frederico. In 1897, Cilea's third opera, L'Arlesiana permiered at the Teatro Lirico in Milan. In the cast was the young Enrico Caruso, who performed with great success the Il Lamento di Federico, the romance of which keeps alive the memory of the opera even to the present day.

Based on a novel, written by Alphonse Daudet, L'Arlesiana is set in Provence, France. L’Arlésienne, which translates to "the lady from Arles", is loved by a young peasant Frederico. However, upon discovering her infidelity prior to their wedding date, Frederico approaches madness. His family tries at great length to save" their son, but eventually Frederico commits suicide by jumping off a balcony. Because the title character is never shown in the play, Arlésienne is now used, in French, to describe a person that is prominently (and sometimes voluntarily) absent from a place or a situation where that person would be expected to show up.

Such great yearning in the opera. In one act, Frederico envies a young shephard who sleeps, "In sleep there is oblivion. How I envy him! If only I could find sleep like this -- to find, at least, oblivion in my sleep!" He misses his love to his core and sings, " I still see her sweet face before me!"

I first heard Jose Carreras sing this lament. And, how it touched me from the first note. I know that, as Tennessee Williams once put it, time is the greatest distance between two points. But, if you have ever awoke in the night to view the stars in a moonless sky and wonder if your line of sight to the star triangulates with some other person on another part of the blue/green/grey earth, you know that he did not have it quite right. Distance is, indeed, separation.