! ! Opera Dei- Mozart To The Life

It’s a snapshot, except before the age of the camera yet more of a decisive moment than any posed painting as any photographer, lighting director, would see, he’s next to you, could be round about the fifth row back of the stalls; looking so straight ahead that it doesn’t seem to be the stage box; and it must surely be a grand theatre, the lighting’s strong on his white neck-stock, his powdered hair, even catching the lower white of his focussed eye; he all there, he’s all here, and attentive as a critic; the opera, as it surely is, is playing and engages all his faculties; and yet there’s an appreciation holding his lips far from the childish joke, the poverty, the family deaths, or even from the unimaginable creation of music that speaks of something deep in human hearts, speaks of something beyond the human heart. He’s listening to the music as if he’d never heard it before yet you can see it’s all inside him, too - whatever ‘inside’ could mean to genius; it’s Mozart, there beside you as you sketch him, as the music you’re not watching as you watch him and your pencil x-rays your very soul and finds it wholly good. So I’d like to thank him in his celebration, our celebration, for telling me just what it’s like to be told in music what life’s about, and more.