Dreamers

The last colour went on the water nymph today. Although the image is based on the mermaid in Copenhagen, I've decided to name the print Rusalka, after the mermaid in Dvorak's opera. NOT because I'm a huge opera fan. True, I do love classical music but opera's different somehow. I know there are people out there who totally "get it" and I envy them. I've managed to make it as far as to know, and get a rush from, several of the big arias and I try listening to the opera broadcasts on the radio every Saturday. I never make it through the whole thing though. I can't seem to develop the patience for it.

It doesn't matter which opera it is, it seems to be a package of a couple of memorable, maybe even spine-tingling, arias surrounded by two hours of stomping around sounds and strange vocal bursts. But then, maybe it's a whole different thing to see it live. Maybe, like a Grateful Dead concert, you have to be there. A soundtrack just doesn't cut it and comes nowhere close to the real experience. So, if anyone wants to send me tickets to the Met, I'm game...

Anyway, yesterday I was finishing carving away the last bits of the water nymph block; the Saturday afternoon opera broadcast was Rusalka. As it happens, Rusalka has one of my most favourite arias in it: The Song to the Moon. It's right in the first act and, because I love the aria, I've often entertained dreams of sitting down and listening to the whole opera. I thought what with it being Czech and all, if I actually heard this one from beginning to end, it might just be the one to turn me into an opera lover. Well, yesterday was my big chance to listen to almost all of it. Did the doors open? Sadly, they did not. But I still really love that aria so, in tribute I've named my print after it. It seems fitting.

And here's the finished print:


And, just for something different, I also looked all over YouTube for the definitive version of the aria to share here and didn't find one. So here's Joshua Bell doing a version of it with the violin as the voice:

And an entertaining, and theatrical, clip of Lucia Popp's version:

I also added two more colours to the print of other dreaming girl. I still do want to darken those hills a bit, but my mind is already moving ahead to the next project.