I like to say that I can speak 4.5 languages. English counts for one, and Spanish, Portuguese and French (debatable) bring the total up to four. The last 0.5 I use to tack on my auxiliary knowledge of miscellaneous words and sentences in Italian and German. This is not from formally studying either of these languages, simply from singing in them for the past six or seven years. “I speak a sort of poetic Italian and German,” I tell people. “I could tell you the word for ‘woman’ or ‘flower’ or ‘moon’ (the classic subjects of opera and art song) but not ask you for the check.” The trick with this, though, is that it feels like I speak these languages because I can pronounce their words. I’ve rolled their consonants around in every which way, up and down scales and runs, and held each of their vowels for measures and measures of music. I can roll an Italian ‘rr’ or sing “Und weißt, daß sich’s für mich nicht schickt” (the wonderful consonant cluster that began my brief hatred of singing in German). My comfort with the sounds of the languages far outstrips any communicative ability I can lay claim to.

It’s all well and good to claim to speak “poetic Italian,” whatever that means, but it is another thing entirely to use it. This past January, I and about twenty classmates piled aboard a 30-seater van to tour Sicily (thank you Humanities Council). The game was up. Now I would see if I had anything to show for all that time I spent poring over my music, translating arias. I told my friend I was like Google Translate if it had only been trained on a dataset of opera lyrics. 

The first challenge: asking where a bathroom was. How do I say ‘where’? where, where, OH, “dove,” like “Dove sono i bei momenti?” (Where are the beautiful moments?)

Then, ordering a coffee. Ok, I want, I want, where do I sing that? Maybe voglio? Like “Ah, non voglio morir! Tutto e finito!” (Ah, I don’t want to die! All is finished!)

This becomes rather funny after a while. 

Because the vast majority of the spoken Italian we encountered was in restaurant settings, my utility as a translator was limited. “Sola, perduta, abbandonata, in landa desolata.” (Alone, lost, abandoned, in a desolate land). I had no reason to say any of these words to the poor waiter who just wanted to know who got the vegetarian dish. Next to me, my friend gave a gleaming example of linguistic efficiency. “Carne,” she said, gesturing at herself. Meat. The waiter whisked the plate of eggplant and fennel away. 

Understanding spoken Italian was a bust. I sat two rows back in the van, listening to the driver and the tour guide fire away and catching a Spanish or French cognate every couple dozen words. Sung Italian, though – that I could do. When we made it to the Teatro Massimo Opera to see Verdi’s Rigoletto, I proudly fixed my eyes on the Italian subtitles above the English ones and watched words I recognized march across the screen. During a slow bit of the show, I wondered whether I would eventually just pick up Italian the more I kept singing and performing. I imagine this happens to the pros. Though, like me, they must have a very specific and strange vocabulary, one wholly ensconced in a world of betrayal, death, passion, and tragedy. Maybe they struggle in restaurants as I did, or while chatting with Uber drivers and baristas. Though, I imagine they’re particularly fluent on the therapist’s couch: 

“What seems to be the problem?”

“I just can’t shake this funk, this odd feeling. I feel sola, perduta, abbandonata.”