Singing All Day

Singing all day, singing 'bout nothing,
Singing all day, singing 'bout nothing,
Singing all day, singing 'bout nothing,
Oh, my, my, my, oh, my, my, my.

Jethro Tull, “Singing All Day”,
from the album Living in the Past

Last night was the first class of my Opera in Context course, and it was a lot of fun. The professor, Rodney, is absolutely passionate about music and it’s a joy and a pleasure to listen to him. It’s going to be a great semester.

One thing we talked about, tangential to opera per se, but relevant even so was – when and why do we sing? After all, in opera, there is a lot of singing (and dialogue, and melodrama, and recitative)

If you think about it, we seldom sing at all anymore. We sing to children (although Rodney mentioned on his last trip to Toronto, he saw advertisements for a course for new mothers to learn how to sing to their children). We sing “Happy Birthday”. We might sometimes sing at a funeral or a wake or similar situation.

But in our quotidian lives, we hardly ever sing.

For myself, I like singing, even though I have no training and possibly sing off key – still, I don’t see why I shouldn’t indulge in such a simple pleasure. Maybe more of us should!