We’ve arrived at the week of Valentine’s Day. If you’re anything like me, your Inbox has overflowed with Special Offers and Promotional hype for flowers, candy, potted plants, teddy bears, and whatever else vendors hope to persuade you to purchase as the perfect Valentine for your honey (and whoever else you’d be inclined to send wishes of love).
Instead of waiting until Friday, I thought I’d get a head start. Here’s the truth for me in a nutshell: sing to me in a foreign language, and it’s inevitable I will fall in love! When I was a youngster, I recall my daddy singing Mario Lanza to me. Perhaps that’s where my first love for music in foreign languages came from, and it hasn’t abated since.
Whether it’s Il Divo or Frederico Cardella or Josh Groban or Mario Frangoulis or The Ten Tenors (among my favorites and all highly recommended), when I listen I’m swept away!
The sonnet below reflects fantasy, my musings as I sit back with the music turned up loud and a cup of hot tea in my grasp. I’ll close my eyes and lose myself in the music. Ahhh ….!
Now, don’t get me wrong. The only man who truly has my heart is the man who has been my Valentine for more than forty years. He knows I’d probably laugh if he were to sing to me in a foreign language … just as I laugh (at his predictability) when we jump in the car and he immediately clicks the cd player over to track five on the Tim Rushlow album: American Cars.
It’s a great song, but sung in English. What a shame.
(By the way, my post’s title is from a Josh Groban album, Closer, track 11. The lyrics can be found here.)