Opera Corner
I have often heard about the songstress Beyonce Knowles, originally of the group Destiny’s Child, that she was both attractive and talented. Well, I was duly impressed when I finally heard her sing! Here is the clip:
Okay. Kidding. That is not Beyonce Knowles. Her name is Denyce Graves, and she is an opera singer.
That opera singers of such talent are less well known than rock and rap singers, or, to be precise, performers (some of them sing; others, not so much) in our modern society is merely one more sign, along with the earthquakes in diverse places and the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet being erected in the Temple, of the End of Days and the coming reign of The Beast.
Of course, I am not an opera fan myself, except for Wagner’s Ring, no more than I am a baseball fan. Nonetheless, I admire and respect opera and baseball without liking them in the least. I consider myself to be the same position as a German barbarian hired by Romans in their days of decline to fight for a high culture he himself cannot really appreciate or admire, his blue eyes round and wide and Teutonic bearded jaw drooping with awe at aqueducts, godlike statues, palaces, roads, laws, epics and wonders the southern genius has produced and can no longer produce.
But sometimes, if you are a true man, and not merely an ape in trousers driven by Darwinian reproductive statistics or hedonistic pleasure-seeking from appetite to dissatisfied appetite, there are things you must treasure even if you find them not to your personal taste.
Some things are objectively beautiful, fine, and true and good. In politics, the ignorant can vote, and everyone has a right to his opinion; in reality, this graceful democratic conception does not apply.
Of what does she sing? You need not ask. Like all French songs, this one is about love. Unless this is an Italian, Spanish, or Crypto-Etruscan song. It is not like I know any still-living foreign languages. I am sure Etruscans sang about love as well:
Love is a rebellious bird
none can tame
You call, but it is in vain
neither threats nor prayers, nothing helps!
Love is a gypsy’s child,
it has never known the law;
if you love me not, then I love you;
if I love you, you’d best beware!
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
