Music… nature…
the “lied”?… a tree?…
The lime tree as a romantic motive, the center around which the inhabitants
of the old Germanic villages usually gathered to celebrate spring, to dance, or
simply to meet (as it still happens today with boisterous groups of young people
during summer holidays).
The old lime tree that inspired the young romantic poet Wilhelm Müller one
of his most famous love poems turned into music by Franz Schubert:
the No. 5 of his “Winterreise”.
“Am Brunnen vor dem Tore / da steht ein Lindenbaum …”
By the fountain near the gate / there stands a linden tree…
The noble lime tree…
exhaling its quite indescribable and unmistakable sweet fragrance…
unless you may listen in certain moments, under very special circumstances,
to the impetuous chords of Franz Schubert and his simple melody seeming
to sprout from people's soul, as well as the verses of F. Rückert put in music
by G. Mahler, an elegant impressive music full of fragrances and tiny flowers,
enclosing the magic of spring.
Right there, in the middle of the small square, in the center of “our” German village, we gladly view it changing along the seasons, at times loaded with snow, at times as a quite natural play area for squirrels, blackbirds, doves, starlings, magpies, tits and sparrows… then glorious flowery in all its splendor, giving shadow to some elders who usually rest there… and inebriating the air with its intense perfume.
For many years this beautiful and old lime tree (at the photo)
formed part of my life in a small village of the region called Bergstrasse, a few kilometers from Heidelberg, the well known symbol of the German romanticism, a cultural and university center where great names of European arts and science have lived, studied and acted (artists, poets, composers, philosophers, scientists, as Goethe, Heine, Hölderlin, Eichendorff, Turner, Brahms, Schumann etc.) and where I began my operatic career as a soprano in a curious nice production of Don Giovanni… in German!
The lime tree… the Lied… the Opera…
have been accompanying me for some decisive years of my life in the search of the essential thing on singing: that the public may forget my voice, so as to enter completely into the magic universe of music, which can enclose everything in just one scene, one phrase or one simple measure… as actually occurs in one of my favorite songs, “Ich atmet´ einen linden Duft” [I aspired a fragrance of lime tree] by Gustav Mahler … which is being played right now: a live recording of the “Festival Galicia Classics”, made in Lugo on 14.04.2011, with Maximino Zumalave on the piano.