C-flat My Valentine?

February 14th is a day that some people dread with every fiber of their being.  The plethora of lace-edged hearts and trite love poems, red roses, and mobs of lovey-dovey couples tossing small nougat-filled chocolates at each other...really, it's enough to make anyone try to use a Russell Stover box as a plunger.

If you have a lover/partner/baritones, you are required by law to spend the evening as Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, i.e. feeding each other chocolate-covered strawberries and limiting your conversation to words that rhyme with "love," "snuggle," and "canoodle."

If, on the other hand, you are currently between lovers/partners/baritones, you are forced to endure the personal humiliation of an evening spent at home, watching "When Harry Met Sally," drinking from a heart-shaped bottle of whiskey, and reminding yourself that, in addition to not getting into any summer programs, you are going to die alone and unloved, surrounded by twelve cats named Bach.

Don't get me wrong...I happen to adore chocolate, and I have been known to wear the color red on occasion.  In fact, I even wrote a Valentine love poem to Charlie Anderson in the ninth grade along the lines of: "I want your body.  You're such a hottie."  (For some reason, he changed his phone number and filed a restraining order the next day, but I really think that we had a connection.)

And, though it may be hard to believe, Valentine's Day does serve an important purpose to our society.  First, it helps fill in the depressing holiday gap between Christmas and the 4th of July.  Second, it reminds us that expensive cardiologists are unnecessary because the heart is actually a two-dimensional symbol surrounded by lace.  Third, it helps our beloved country maintain its Olympiad status of obesity.  Huzzah!

In essence, what truly enrages me about Valentine's Day is the extent to which opera singers are cut out of the holiday.  Three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, we are the experts on love: whether it's romantic love, carnal love, parental love, incestuous love, perverted love, intellectual love, culinary love...you name it, we sing it in our opera houses.

But then, when February 14th rolls around, the civilians decide to mutiny against our romantic monopoly and take matters into their own hands.  And what is the result of this heavy-handedness?  Coconut-flavored chocolates and Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On."

With that in mind, I have taken it upon myself to reinvent Valentine's Day as a holiday that can be celebrated best by opera singers.  Russell Stover and Hallmark will continue to churn out chocolates and banal poems, but, for this year at least, I have created a few Lily Puns replacements for those painful Valentine traditions.

Box of chocolates:

Buy a box of Mozartkugeln and write a short note that reads: "Batti, batti, but my love for you is come scoglio."

If your inclinations are more toward early music, you might want to consider accompanying your chocolate with: "I love your well-tempered clavicle, so I'll definitely be Bach" or "If I don't get a Handel on you, my heart will be baroque."

Or, for a more generic Valentine saying, I would recommend either: "Roses are red, charcoal is black, I just don't like your vocal attack" or "Roses are red, votes need a ballot, my teacher says that you need more palate."

Seductive sonnet for a handsome baritone/tenor

Perhaps you've noticed how I look at you

At school, in class, especially when you sing

I've spent some time constructing plans to woo

A bari-tenor.  You are just the thing!

Your dulcet tones are sweet, the truth be told

But even more, I like the way you place

Your vowels up front, your [i] and [a] so bold.

I've just so glad that you are not a bass.

I think you might be dating someone new

But honestly, her high notes are quite weak.

My Mimi, Tosca, Anna, and Lulu

Make hers sound like a toilet with a leak.

So drop the broad, and be my Don Jose

We'll sing a duet Valentine, okay?

Break-up sonnet for your current baritone/tenor so that you are free to pursue the handsome baritone/tenor mentioned above:

Oh God, I cannot stand it any more.

We're done, we're through, you owe me last month's rent

You weren't that smart and really such a bore,

But, worst of all, your voice was nightmare sent.

While we were close, I felt the need to lie.

You tried your best (I guess) at singing well,

But when you'd vocalize, I'd want to die...

Eight months with you was tantamount to Hell.

Your tone is harsh and thick, you tend to crack,

And as for pitch, you might as well be deaf.

Your low notes wobble with the breath you lack;

Your high notes shriek and struggle at mere F.

So that's my reason: simply, straight, and true...

My vocal taste demands much more than you.

Falling in love...and not just with opera

The day before I left for college, my mother took me aside and gave me one particular piece of sage advice. “Never date a tenor,” she told me. I placed my right hand on my heart and gave her an earnest promise. After all, it didn’t seem like such a difficult task: the only real-life tenor that I had ever met was the fifty-five-year old specimen playing Siegfried at the opera house. Highlights included thinning hair, a problematic overbite, and a physical stature frighteningly similar to that of Jabba the Hut.

Less than two weeks later, I had already broken my promise. I called my mother and admitted the full extent of my failure as a daughter in five shameful words: “Mom…I’m dating a tenor.”

Alas, that tenor was only the first of many tenors, baritones, and basses to charm both my ears and my heart. To make matters worse, one of those baritones was really nothing more than a self-hating tenor, and one of the tenors was also a trumpet player, a crime that is tantamount to political treason in my parents’ house.

After each romance ended, I would clean up all of the broken glass and tattered rose petals and promise myself never to date a tenor (or a baritone or a bass) ever again. And yet, for a period of six years, it would only take the barest hint of a baritone aria or an elegant tenor high A to make me willingly plummet headlong into the exciting world of opera incest once again.

Here’s the scientific truth. Female singers are automatically built with a unique hormonal response that activates the instant they hear an adequate rendition of either “Dies Bildnis” or “Bella siccome un angelo.” Some women have such a keen aural perception that even the worst rendition of “Dies Bildnis” or “Bella siccome un angelo” will do. This, of course, explains Andrea Bocelli’s popularity.

This aural response is heightened by a visual reaction to the sleek lines of a tuxedo as well as the general sexual frustration that permeates the halls of every conservatory. For a practical exercise, combine all of the above in the soprano of your choosing, add twelve hours of opera rehearsal with a particular tenor or baritone, stir for six measures, and then simply wait for the emotional fireworks to begin.

Male singers, on the other hand, are completely unaware of the strength of the hormonal response that they inspire in females of the opera singing species. In the end, they simply wait for the women to flock to them and rely solely on an automatic “sing or sting” response that allows them to flee if they are approached by a soprano more than four times their size.

No matter how you stir it, romance and opera singing just don’t mix…at least not if you don’t want to have to have a straitjacket, two pairs of goggles, and plastic wine glasses on hand. Sure, it’s difficult to resist the charms of the opposite sex when she’s wearing a voluminous gown with a corset, he’s wearing extremely tight bloomers, and they are both singing the hell out of a virtuosic aria. But step back and think for a moment before you get too caught up in the cadenza.

Of all of the opera singers that I have dated, there are at least three that I am probably going to have to work with again at some point in my career. (As far as the rest of you go, I can tell you now what I was forced to deny while we were dating: your voice just isn’t very good.)

While I admit that it might be fun to trade passive-aggressive barbs with that tenor from my sophomore year of college, none of those relationships were really worth the future aggravation that I will have to face. Opera singing is our business, and, as we all know, one of the cardinal rules of any career is that you don’t mix business with pleasure.

So, as a soprano who has crossed over to the dark side of opera romance and lived to tell about it, let me condescend to give you some good advice.

Never date an opera singer.

Unless, of course, his brother is an investment banker. In that case, invite them both over for dinner.