Broadway singer-actress Laura Benanti, whom Gregg Shapiro interviewed for our July 2019 issue, has invited kids to share their high school musical performances – which they won’t be giving, thanks to COVID-19 – at #SunshineSongs. And “Hamilton’s” Lin-Manuel Miranda is watching.
Music is indeed, to borrow from Shakespeare, “the food of love” nowadays as isolated Italians, hard-hit by the virus, serenade one another across balconies, Here Maurizio Marchini sings “Nessun Dorma,” the iconic tenor aria from Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Turandot,” which ends with the word “Vincerò,” meaning “I will be victorious.”
It reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem “A Tuft of Flowers,” in which one solitary mower admires the titular tuft of flowers left by another, which makes him feel less lonesome. It closes with the lines:
“‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
“‘Whether they work together or apart.’”
– Georgette Gouveia
