Oxygen For the Soul: Creative Arts in a Pandemic
My top 3 operatically connected inspirational posts
Let me start off with this piece by Sean P. Durham, which is about how vital the arts are at crucial times, such as this. He asserts:
The thing about the human race is that it loves a big challenge to bring the best out in itself.
He shares moving examples of how artists and writers have stayed connected to their craft during the most horrific of times, on battlefields, for example. And the creative ways they found to do that.
Which brings to my mind the true story of the power of music to ignite and unite the human soul during WW I. This story of a holiday truce which brought the soldiers out into no man’s land to share their meager rations and celebrate together across enemy lines is depicted in the songs, Christmas in the Trenches, Christmas 1915 and a film, Joyeux Noel.
The order-defying bravery began with a German opera singer belting out Ave Maria, with much the same passion as we saw recently when Maurizio Marchini gifted the Italian air with his rich tenor voice.
Sean writes: Fear causes us to forget to live. It petrifies the soul and turns it to stone.
