I cried again today.

I cry when I least expect it, when something triggers me, a memory, a picture, a sound from the past.

This time it was Claudia Muzio. I was scrolling through the back-and- forth of opera fanatics, I should probably say aficionados, and there were recordings and appraisals of that wonderful, great, unforgettable soprano who died too early but left recordings to console us for her loss. Shirley and I discovered her together, and knew immediately, and took her to our hearts.

Shirley and I were both little classical music nerds who grew up listening to records. We each had our own collection. Mine was based on my Father’s collection. He loved music the way I did, and we listened to it together. I listened on my own when he was not around or at work. I turned the volume up and let it wash over me. My Mother, those times when she was living with us, would say, “Turn it down. The neighbors…” I said, “They’re Italian, and the operas are mostly in Italian, so they should love it.” I cherished those moments when there was no one else around to complain and I could keep the nob turned high.

A treasured memory which I replay is the time my Father took me to Wallach’s Music City to buy some records. We wanted to get a good recording of La Boheme. The store had little booths with record players and chairs and a glass door you could close. You found the records you were thinking of buying, took them into the booth to try them out to decide. They never pressured you for time and you could stay in the booth for hours playing records. I don’t think they were demonstration records, just from the racks, and we were careful to play and not scratch. We were not required to buy any of them. Even in those days, the 1950s, it seemed a refreshingly wonderful policy, surprising to me when I could see crass commercialization sweeping the country, but here the old ways survived, the value of true essence, the enjoyment of and respect for the music itself, the trust of the customer.

We took two complete performances into the booth. We sat for hours, listened to Callas and di Stefano to the last cry of “Mimi! Mimi!” Then we put on de los Angeles, Bjorling, Beecham. The beauty of de los Angeles swept us away, the classic performance where Beecham integrated the whole experience in the way that only he could do. The moment when Mimi swells with the orchestra, “ma quando vien la squalo…” and the heart almost stops but swells along and opens out into the rest of the aria, and I felt I had never heard anything like it and wanted more, couldn’t get enough. It was an easy comparison. Though we responded to the clear northern tone of Bjorling, we liked di Stefano more for the warmth and emotion in the voice, the eager flow, the impetuous rush. But de los Angeles swept all other considerations aside, we bought the album and took it home. I played it again and again. My Mother surprised me by remarking on the tragic pain and loss at the final cry of despair.

I listened to a lot of records.

Shirley had her own collection. She was buying them through the mail, the Columbia Record Club, paying for them herself from the little she earned on her own working at Storktown where she was such a good salesperson they didn’t check too closely for her employable age.

Our collection was largely RCA. Hers from the record club was mostly Columbia. She had Ormandy where we had Reiner. She had Stern where we had Heifetz. She had Pennario and Istomin where we had Rubinstein.
The story of our record trade became a classic which we liked retelling. A mutual high school friend from our graduating class also attended UCR and served as go-between. Shirley gave him a stack of records to pass on to me on loan from her collection. She wanted to share. He didn’t tell me that, instead, with a wicked glint, said, “Here are some records I don’t want anymore. Do you want them? You can have them.”

I took them home over the weekend away from the dorms, and my Father was delighted. Fresh meat for hungry appetites, a chance to compare and explore.

A few weeks later Shirley asked how I liked the records and if I was finished with them. She wanted them back. My Father said, “Don’t give them to her. She’s just trying to get the records your friend gave you.” But then I asked myself, “How did she know about them?” And the shock of recognition led me to get a comparable stack which I could add when I returned hers, a thank you gift and apology. I added little notes and love poems I’d written spaced between each of my offerings, and all was more than forgiven. I was crazy for her.

We listened to records together. Two little nerds, comparing competing performances. “Reiner has the clarity, the ability to raise a sudden crescendo apparently from nowhere unexpectedly in Mahler’s Fourth, and other conductors said How did you do that?” But Ormandy, “that satisfying richness of sound, those renowned Philadelphia strings that are the envy of everyone…”

Two adorable little nerds. We were made for each other.

We frequented the second floor of the UCR library where there were turntables and earphones and you could listen to records from their collection, or bring your own. We sat together by the turntable between our chairs, our earphones plugged in, and shared the sound. That’s where we had our first kiss, listening to Tristan und Isolde, Kirsten Flagstad as Isolde, we turned to each other and our faces came together.

That’s where we discovered Claudia Muzio. I wrote poems about her, her moment in Traviata where she as Violetta lies dying and the voice breaks at death but won’t let go. I always said from the little I know and the little I heard and read, that Muzio had the drama Callas was famous for, and the voice Callas only wished for. When Muzio’s health and voice were in decline, she still loved to sing so much that she recorded songs and we discovered Donaudy, “Spirate Pur, Spirate” and then “O del mio amato ben,” with so much heart and feeling that it became “our song.” I found the sheet music in the basement archives of the UCLA Library, made copies, returned the originals to the folder, and brought the copies home so we could learn the songs and we sang them together.

I’m looking through the boxes of my life to find the scores again, so I can hold them in my hand and remember, as I sing them alone now, of how we were together.

And that’s why, looking at Muzio on the computer screen, clicking the arrow and hearing again “our song,” a song of loss, I cried again this morning.