Wang’s masterful film tells the story of a Billi and her family seeing Nai Nai (Billi’s grandmother) for what they believe to be the last time. She has cancer and as the film notes, people in Chinese see this word as a death sentence. But the family agrees to never tell her about her diagnosis, allowing her to enjoy her final days without the fear of impending doom.
It also shouldn’t be ignored that while much of the movie favors Mandarin as its main language, adding another language within the context of the story adds to the universality of the emotion experienced by Billie and her family.
The song is itself a declaration of pain and sorrow without a loved one. “Dearest, my beloved, believe me at least this much, without you, my heart languishes,” says the piece’s main melody with B-section asking for cruelty to end between the narrator and the object of his/her affection.
The choice of an operatic voice gives the scene an added emotional pathos due to its abstract and eternal qualities; this isn’t a vocal expression that has been tampered or edited with in the way a digital voice is on a lot of modern music. Its natural quality emphasizes the emotional veracity that the film seeks to explore.
So for this moment where Nai Nai seems at her happiest and most content, Wang brings in the famed song “Caro mio ben” by Tommaso Giordani. In the film, the piece is sung as a diegetic performance, though it eventually takes on a non-diegetic life of its own that explores the film’s emotional core and pain.
His whereabouts in the following eight years are unknown. In 1764, he accepted an invitation to act as musical director of the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, where he stayed for the next three years, performing comic operas and co-produced the first ever opera seria to be performed in Ireland, L’eroe cinese (1766). Following accusations of plagiarism, he went back to London in 1767, where for the next 16 years he was relatively successful as an opera composer.
From 1783, Giordani returned to live in Ireland for the remainder of his life. He was particularly active in opera, as both composer and impresario. He had a stake in the short-lived ‘English Opera House’, which he founded in 1783 and which produced works by Irish composers and librettists, also in a music shop, neither of which was financially successful. Among his pupils were Lady Morgan, Thomas Simpson Cooke, and John Field, the inventor of the nocturne, who made his debut at one of Giordani’s Rotunda concerts (4 April 1792). He died in Dublin.
Giordani’s parents were Domenico Giordani and Anna Maria Tosato.[1] He studied music in Naples with Domenico Cimarosa and Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli. In 1774 he was appointed as music director of the chapel of the Duomo of Naples. His first opera (L’Epponina) was released in 1779. His sacred drama La distruzione di Gerusalemme was a notable success at the Teatro San Carloof Naples in 1787. He became maestro di cappella at the Cathedral of Fermo in 1791.
–HIGH KEY–
Tonic note pitch:
************************************ ENTIRE ACCOMPANIMENT ONLY (high key): ************************************ FULL PERFORMANCE: ************************************
*** TOP OF PG. 86: “Il tuo fedele . . .”
*** PG. 86, MEASURE 16: “Cessa, cruel, tanto rigor! . . .”
*** BOTTOM OF PG. 86, MEASURE 21: “Caro mio ben . . .”
*** PG. 87, MEASURE 25: “Caro mio ben . . .”
*** PG. 87, MEASURE 27: “senza di te . . .”
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