Women's voices: Beautiful like a rainbow

Since the Voices are how I characterize intuition—that gut feeling you get about a situation or a person, which you ignore or contravene at your own peril—let’s return to Cyndi Lauper, and one of her signature pieces.

Of course I’m talking about “True Colors”—the ability to see and appreciate people as they truly are, irrespective of how they try to dress themselves up or down.

The song is a natural as anthem for the LGBT movement, and Lauper has made use of it to support the equality cause. I’ve always seen it as a friendly kind of song—as in all about friendship.

My association with my second offering today is kind of the antithesis of friendship and the kind of relationship that supports. Not because “Caro mio ben” is an 18^th Century punk song but because…well.

Back in the vast primordial beginning of this century, O Best Belovèd, I got to know someone who, ah, comment dit-on? Who only ever listens to another person as a staging ground for producing what he thinks are either bons mots or Timeless Truths. For some reason, “Caro mio ben” came up as a topic, and I mentioned that I’ve sung it. (Come on—everyone’s sung it.) He proclaimed that it’s a great song by…Mozart. I replied to the effect that—according to my Schirmer’s sheet music—it’s by Giordani.

Without hesitation he responded, “…with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”

Well, there you go.

(The really interesting thing about him and others like him is that they believe everything that comes out of their mouths. So fully that I’m willing to bet that they’d all pass polygraph tests, regardless of the porkies they produce.)

I don’t hold it against the song though.

As an aside—I would have given you another piece, actually by Mozart, from Bartoli, which is on my personal Bucket List. (It’s kind of interesting that the worse my voice gets, the more ambitious my aspirations become.) But “Exsultate Jubilate” runs to 14-15 minutes. A little long to keep you here. But I just love that sucker; as with “O mio babbino caro”, I’ve got multiple recordings of it. I first heard Frederica von Stade sing it way back in the 80s, but had a devil of a time finding a recording of her. (Which appears to be the case on YouTube, too.) Sumi Jo’s is quite interesting, and of course Kathleen Battle’s can’t be matched for purity of tone. But I always keep coming back to Bartoli; her voice has a quality of warmth that keeps me enthralled.