To Lose a Mockingbird

Perhaps literature’s most famous paternal advice was given in Maycomb County by a lawyer named Atticus to his young son Jem: “Shoot all the bluejays you want, but always remember that it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” As Miss Maudie later explained to Scout, and we were sadly reminded today “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy; they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.”

Luciano Pavarotti’s great heart has now been stilled, his soaring voice silenced. Even now, experts and pundits are scrambling to explain the historical impact of Pavarotti's career. My advice to them, on behalf of a world largely comprised of music aficionados with no formal training or skill is; please don’t bother. Like former Attorney General Ed Meese, who knew pornography when he saw it, most of us know good music when we hear it-- and we didn’t need to be opera experts to know we were hearing something special when Pavarotti sang it.

Our dad’s idea of a perfect Saturday was to work in his shop while listening to opera. (In our family, dad’s workshop was analogous to what most of you know as the garage, since his shop usually held a partially constructed airplane instead of the family car).

“Hey, take this bucking bar and crawl back into the fuselage and hold it against the rivets for me.” (Most kids mowed the lawn; we bucked rivets for our old man while he built his plane). The noise produced by riveting is loud enough from outside a hollow metal chamber, let alone the inside. Between rivets I became dimly aware of a beautiful sound emanating from dad’s cherished radio, which he’d proudly purchased on the Reader’s Digest Easy Payment Plan of $5 a month.

“Hey dad,” I yelled, “Who’s that singing?”

“That’s Pavarotti!” BRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPP!

So, my appreciation for opera was born between rivets-- although “La Boheme” is much prettier when your ears aren’t ringing. In a world full of raucous birds that eat our gardens and nest in our corncribs, the mockingbirds are few and far between. When we lose them, their absence is like the silence that follows a thunderstorm, or a rivet bucking session.

“Nessun Dorma” is the famous aria from Puccini’s opera “Turandot” and was Pavarotti’s signature piece. Nessun dorma, “Let no one sleep,” was the order of Princess Turandot, as she proclaimed that all should spend the night searching for the name of the unknown prince.

Tonight, Turandot’s prince sleeps amongst the angels, his aria finished, the curtain lowered one last time.

Bravo, Luciano, bravissimo!