Sunday, April 08, 2007

A Monologue

Oh. Oh, this is my favorite aria. It's Maria Callas. It's Andrea Chénier. Umberto Giordano. This is Maddalena. She's saying how, during the French Revolution, a mob set fire to her house and her mother died, saving her. "The place that cradled me is burning." Can you hear the heartache in her voice? Can you feel it, Joe? In come the strings and it changes everything. The music, it fills with a hope and that'll change again. Listen. Listen. "I bring sorrow to those who love me." Oh, that single cello! "It was during this sorrow that love came to see me." A voice filled with harmony. It says, "Live still, I am life. Heaven is in your eyes. Is everything around you just the blood and mud? I am divine. I am oblivion. I am the god… that comes down from the heavens, and makes of the Earth a heaven. I am love!...I am love.”

Tom Hanks as Andy Beckett in Philadelphia

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