Tangled Web

Before a neck injury sidelined my career, I was a professional classical flutist. Oddly enough, my favorite piece of music contains no flute part!

Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings was written in 1936 and first premiered under conductor Arturo Toscanini in 1938 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, NY, U.S.A.. It is said that Barber wrote the piece about a stream flowing and gradually growing into a massive river.

Barber may have intended his Adagio to represent nature and growth, but the piece is commonly played at funerals, as its sonority tends to bring people to tears. I recommend listening to the SONY recording of this piece, with Thomas Schippers conducting the New York Philharmonic.

This photo is of Thomas Schippers, Samuel Barber, and Martina Arroyo, a famous vocalist. I snapped this photo from the album notes because of the contrasting expressions on each of their faces. They are listening to the playback of a recording of Barber's piece, Andromache's Farewell, based on Euripides' The Trojan Women.

Arroyo was only 26 years old when she recorded with Schippers and Barber. You can see how nervous she was, despite the fact that she was the hottest Opera singer with the Metropolitan Opera.

Schippers, all of 33 in this photo, displays his sense of artistry as the conductor. Handsome, talented and a natural conductor, his passion for music seeps out of his pores.

Barber,at 53, looks sour. Does he know that Schippers and his partner Gian Carlo Menotti are secretly seeing one another behind his back? There is something so stiff about the way he is listening to this powerful and emotional piece of music. I almost feel sorry for him.

Music has a way of bringing out feelings in people, and I can't help but wonder if Barber had some sort of memory of his love of Menotti that triggered his reaction to hearing the recording. After all, they were life partners, and Barber was 20 years older than Schippers.

It's all speculation on my part, but it makes for a tale of intrigue. My mother took me to the opera when I was a year old, and music became a major part of my life from that moment onward. I love the way it tells a story, and in the case of Samuel Barber, his music ignites the soul with passion that belies his image.

Perfect fodder for The Love Child Chronicles.