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by carol elliot
carol6@comcast.net
If you have any pre-conceived notions that the music genre referred to as opera is stuffy and that you wouldn’t waste your time on it, you many want to read Gerry Brody’s book Opera: You Never Knew You Loved It! A radio personality for Flagler College Radio, Brody has brought The Joy of Opera into homes in the St. Augustine area for over a decade.
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A successful and highly sought teacher for Elderhostel, he compares it to a meal that is palatable. “I will not call spaghetti with tomato sauce capelli d’angelo pomodor,” he writes. “This tendency has served to separate opera from the folks who do not yet realize that they can come to love the all encompassing vocal art form.” In his book, he explains what opera is really all about and how to prepare before you listen.
A regular guy himself, he invites regular folk to share his passion. Brody grew up in Brooklyn. He was born into a family of musicians. His mother was a pianist who sang soprano. He could play the piano at age three. When World War II ended, his home had a few of the early recordings of opera legends Caruso, Galli-Curci, and McCormack.
Over the years, Brody literally embraced over 6,000 long playing vinyl records that pertain to opera which he lovingly calls his “special sweethearts.” “These LP’s take me back two centuries when most of us are dealing with the 21st,” he told me in a phone interview from his St. Augustine residence.
Brody was at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1961 when tenor Franco Corelli and soprano Birgit Nilsson vied for vocal supremacy over a full orchestra during the restaging of Puccini’s Turandot. An astounding thing occurred. Crystal glasses didn’t break but there was a sympathetic resonance of Corelli’s voice to some of the steel beams in the wall next to Brody. “There is a word to describe this effect – thrill!” According to Brody, it only takes one voice or a single chord to turn us on to opera.
The Italy of the 17th century was the birthplace of opera. Many of us think of opera as a style of music that was intended for only a very small part of the population and suffices to say, you, the reader, are probably thinking “I’m certainly not one of them.” By the turn of the 20th century, we were opera and opera was us – the treachery, jealousy, infidelity, vengeance and penchant for violence, in other words, opera stories were about real life (verismo) situations!” How can we turn away from all that!
Just to show how down to earth opera really is, artist and friend Dick Zayac illustrated the book cover by portraying a biker and his babe cruising down the highway singing operatic tunes. The biker image also came about because Brody happened to be teaching an Elderhostel group in Daytona during Bike Week. “What better image than a biker to take away the stuffiness label,” admits Brody, “and at the same time intrigue some bikers by the cover.”
Brody’s witty sense of humor surfaces throughout the 97 pages of text in this 122 page soft cover book. A book signing will take place on Friday evening, November 3rd, at the St. Augustine Art Association, 22 Marine Street, in conjunction with the First Friday Art Walk.
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