That is perhaps one of the greatest speeches of all times… Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie"
Chaplin was more than an actor; he was a great compositor, musician,
writer and director, and a human being full of passion.
In times of
change when the world of cinema turned into the period of sound films, Chaplin
delivered this masterpiece for the delight of audiences of all
generations. Let the speech motivates you if what you have rushing
through your veins is blood.
I'm sorry but I don't want
to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer
anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man,
white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want
to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to
hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the
earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost
the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world
with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will
be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together.
The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries
out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is
reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and
little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison
innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed,
the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will
pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to
the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .
Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise
you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to
think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon
fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men,
with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not
cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't
hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers:
don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
"The kingdom of God is within man"
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines,
the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free
and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of
democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world,
a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the
future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have
risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never
will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight
to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with
national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight
for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all
men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
. . .
Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is
breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are
coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate
and brutality.
The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is
beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into
the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look
up. Look up.
If you don’t
have the habit of going to operas every once in a while, that is something
really worth doing – at least once so you see for yourself this magnificent
form of art in all its splendor and virtuosity.
Elite
singers and musicians perform at the top of their talents an amazing
combination of music and drama which was created half millennium ago and
evolved to the nearest to perfection as an art form can be.
As it is
widely known, Italy is the heart of the world in opera
matters and it’s also believed that this music tradition had its origins there,
but that does not get the importance of other countries in essentially contributing
to create unforgettable works, as Germany, France, Russia and England.
Here I will
leave you with some of my favorite operas – at least, some arias – in case
you’re curious to see something new or maybe just miss watching them; anyway, I
hope you have a good time!
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts
by Giacomo
Puccini, and
perhaps it has one of the most famous aria in the world. The first performance was held at
the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on April 25,
1926 and
conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Puccini's last opera was left unfinished at
his death, and what he had intended to be a final, transcendent love duet was
completed by a younger colleague, Franco Alfano.
In Peking's ImperialPalace, the fatally beautiful Princess
Turandot receives unlucky suitors from far and wide, who must answer three
riddles to win her hand—or die. Calaf,
son of the exiled King Timur of Tartary, is struck with Turandot's beauty, and
ignoring protests from his father and Liù, the servant girl who loves him, he
matches wits with the princess. Although
he guesses the three riddles, Calaf offers his life to Turandot if she can
discover his secret name. Searching the
city in vain, the princess finally tortures faithful Liù, driving her to
suicide. Faced with Liù's sacrifice and
Calaf's stern devotion, Turandot crumbles, and weeping in Calaf's arms, she
declares that his secret name is Love.
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in
three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an
Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa
and it premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January
1900. It is personally one of my favorites of all,
and the 2001 movie with Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu was a very good and
accessible reproduction of it.
Tosca opens
in a roman church, where the artist Cavaradossi paints a Mary Magdalen portrait
while dreaming of his lover, Tosca, a famously passionate singer. Suddenly the escaped political prisoner
Angelotti staggers in, on the run from the savage police chief Scarpia. When Tosca arrives and overhears the two men
talking, she is devoured with suspicion that Cavaradossi has another lover, but
the painter soothes her and hides Angelotti. The angry Scarpia bursts in, hot on the
escapee's heels and burning with lust for Tosca. Sizing up the situation, he
schemes to make the jealous singer betray her lover's secret. Cavaradossi is arrested and brutally
tortured, blackmailing Tosca into revealing Angelotti's whereabouts. Scarpia demands Tosca's favors as payment for
her lover's life, but the agonized Tosca meets his embrace with a fatal knife
thrust. Joyfully, she goes to free Cavaradossi, but Scarpia's final cruel
artifice leads her instead to witness her lover's execution. As the police pursue her, Tosca throws
herself from a parapet to her death.
Carmen
Carmen is an opera in four acts by the
French composer Georges
Bizet. It is,
perhaps, the opera with the most famous arias of all. The opera was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, on 3 March 1875, and was not at first particularly
successful; its initial run extended to 36 performances. Before this run was concluded, Bizet died
suddenly, and thus knew nothing of the opera's later celebrity.
In the kind of Spain that 19th-century French composers
dreamt of, gypsy cigarette girl Carmen taunts corporal Don José with her flamboyant
charms, and even the gentle peasant girl Micaela, who loves Don José, cannot
break Carmen's spell, and the corporal gives up everything to follow the gypsy
into the mountains. She quickly tires of
Don José and runs off with the handsome matador Escamillo, fatalistically
embracing the warning of death she has seen in the cards. As Escamillo triumphs in the bullring, Carmen
is confronted by Don José in a nearby alley, and this time, her defiance cannot
save her.
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three
acts by Giuseppe
Verdi. It
was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11,
1851. It
is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's
middle-to-late career.
Rigoletto is the bitter, hunchbacked court jester whose
treasured daughter, Gilda, has caught the eye of the womanizing Duke of
Mantua. Approaching Gilda, the duke
declares his love, and the girl discovers a passion for him. Court nobles, seeking revenge for the
jester's many insults, dupe Rigoletto into helping them kidnap Gilda, who is
delivered to the Duke and seduced by him.
Determined to show his daughter the Duke's true nature, Rigoletto takes
her to the house of the assassin Sparafucile, whose sister Maddalena offers the
duke her gypsy favors. Rigoletto has hired Sparafucile to kill the
duke, but Maddalena convinces her assassin brother to murder arandom victim instead. Knowing she will be murdered, Gilda appears
in disguise, is stabbed, stuffed in a sack and delivered to Rigoletto in place
of the duke's body. At the last minute,
the horrified hunchback opens the sack and discovers his daughter, who whispers
her last words of love for the duke and dies.
La Traviata
La traviatais an opera in
three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, based on La dame aux Camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas. The first performance of the opera was
on 6 March 1853 at the La Fenice opera house in Venice. It was jeered at times by the audience, who
directed some of their scorn at the casting of soprano Fanny
Salvini-Donatelli in the lead role of Violetta. Though she was an acclaimed singer, they
considered her to be too old (at 38) and too overweight to credibly play a
young woman dying of consumption.
The opera
tells the story of a Paris rich boy named Alfredo, who falls
for the consumptive prostitute Violetta.
His father isn't happy with the relationship and persuades her to
abandon him because her scandalous past threatens his son's future. She goes back to her old life, but falls
mortally ill, so Alfredo’s father relents and allows a touching deathbed
reunion.
Aida
Aida, sometimes spelled Aïda, is also an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, based on a scenario
written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Aida was
first performed at the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo on 24
December 1871, conducted by Giovanni Bottesini.
On Egypt, Rhadames, a warrior, is delighted to learn that he
has been chosen to lead the army against the Ethiopian enemy, because he hopes
that he will thus be able to win Aida, a slave girl, as his prize for victory
in battle. Aida is the captured daughter
of the Ethiopian king, Amonasro, and she fears that either her lover or her father
will be killed in battle. However, the
king's daughter, Amneris, has set her mark on Rhadames, and his coldness
towards her confirms her suspicions that he loves someone else. Pharaoh and his court receive triumphant
Rhadames, who is asked to name his reward.
The crowd call for the prisoners to be killed, but Rhadames asks that,
as his reward, their lives be spared. Pharaoh agrees, and gives him the hand of
Amneris for good measure, plus naming Rhadames as his own successor as
Pharaoh. Amneris tells Rhadames that
King Amonasro has been killed, but that Aida is alive. The deal is that if
Rhadames agrees to forget about Aida, she, Amneris that is, will obtain a
pardon from the Pharaoh, but he can’t. If Amneris can't have her man, nobody
else can, and Rhadames is thus condemned to death. By being bricked up alive,
but before the vault is closed, Aida joins him to share his fate. Amneris repents
of her actions.
Pagliacci
Pagliacci, sometimes incorrectly rendered
with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a
prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo, and it is his only opera that is still widely
staged. Leoncavallo was slapped with a
lawsuit for plagiarizing the plot for the opera Pagliacci. In his defense, Leoncavallo claimed that the
opera plot was based on a childhood experience.
Pagliacci premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on May 21,
1892,
conducted by Arturo Toscanini.
Tonio, a
member of an itinerant touring troupe, tells the audience of a village in Calabria that though they are seeing a play,
they should remember that actors, even clowns, are real people who suffer and
live lives of agony as well as joy. Canio
invites everyone to their performance that night, and the villagers invite him
to have a drink with them. One man makes
a crack about Tonio having a chance to seduce Nedda, Canio’s wife. Canio, instantly serious, tells him that
nothing relating to his wife is a joking matter. When he leaves, Nedda is
at first frightened that Canio might know something of her activities, but then
she finally agrees to leave Canio for her lover, a townsperson named Silvio. Tonio, who desired Nedda, smarting from her
rejection, returns and sees the lovers. He
rushes off to the village to get Canio. The
two lovers plan to elope that night, and Canio comes in just as he hears Nedda
sing that on that night she will be Silvio’s forever; she does not use his
name, and Canio screams and chases the younger man who escapes. When Canio returns, she refuses to give him
her lover’s name. She goes off to prepare for the show; Beppe tells Canio that
he must prepare as well and play the clown although his heart is breaking. The play opens with scenes of Nedda with
Tonio and their happy romance. Canio, as
the clown, enters just as Nedda sings the exact words he heard her say to her
lover an hour or so earlier, and he burst into fury. Nedda tries for a few moments to bring Canio
back to the play, but all he can do is to demand the name of her lover. She finally explodes, crying that she will
never tell him. Blind with rage, he stabs her. Silvio breaks from the crowd; Canio sees him
and stabs him. The opera ends with the immortal line, “The comedy is
over.”
