Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

John Frederick Nims’ "Opera" is an intimate reflection on memory, love, and the haunting nature of art. The poem revisits a past moment of shared experience—watching Maria Callas perform Tosca at La Scala in 1953—yet the speaker finds himself increasingly alone in his recollection. The poem meditates on the intersection of personal and aesthetic rapture, where the grandeur of opera and the intensity of love intertwine, only to be later fragmented by time.

The opening line establishes a time, a place, and a name synonymous with operatic brilliance—"Callas. La Scala. Tosca. '53." The clipped, declarative rhythm mimics a formal program announcement, yet the starkness also suggests something missing. The next line—"Strange, I remember only I was there."—immediately unsettles the expectation of shared memory. The speaker acknowledges the paradox of recalling an event that was experienced together but now feels solitary. The contrast between past presence and present absence forms the emotional core of the poem.

The recordings of Tosca, particularly the aria "Vissi d’arte", evoke sharp, almost painful emotions in the speaker—"poignancy / Of 'Vissi d’arte' can lacerate the air / When listening by myself." The choice of "lacerate" suggests an open wound, an unresolved ache. The aria itself, sung by Tosca in a moment of despair, reflects a plea to divine justice—"I lived for art, I lived for love." This theme of devotion and suffering resonates with the speaker’s present state: while the performance once belonged to a shared experience, it has now become a solitary lament.

The poem then revisits the night of the performance, shifting from the impersonal frame of Callas and La Scala to the second-person address: "You were beside me / That evening in Milan." However, this recollection is immediately troubled by uncertainty—"Were just beside? / No happier preposition?" The speaker longs for a grammatical shift that could better capture the intimacy of their proximity. The reference to John Donne—"Donne could guide me"—reinforces this desire for a more precise articulation of closeness. Donne, the metaphysical poet of lovers "inter-assured of the mind", offers a vision of intimacy beyond the physical. The speaker is searching for a word that might recover what time has eroded, a preposition that does not merely place them adjacent but entwined.

The historical reference to Frederick II, known as Stupor Mundi—"the World's Amazement"—adds a layer of irony. The phrase, which connotes both wonder and bewilderment, encapsulates the speaker’s divided state. In the moment of the performance, overwhelmed by "glory", the speaker was blinded—"Glory can blind, as once it did by screening / Sets, theater, and diva."* The grandeur of the opera and the spectacle of Callas eclipsed everything else, including the presence of the beloved. Yet, in retrospect, that moment is illuminated in a different way. The final lines—"Leaning, I dazzled in the sidewise light / Till love’s halation became second sight."—suggest a revelation that only arrives later. "Halation", the soft glow around a bright object, metaphorically represents the afterimage of love. While the immediate brilliance of the opera once obscured his perception, the speaker now sees with "second sight", an understanding that comes only with distance and loss.

The poem’s structure reflects its thematic preoccupations with time and memory. The enjambments create a sense of searching and hesitancy, particularly in the central section, where the speaker questions language itself. The controlled, almost formal tone of the beginning—establishing the performance as a monumental event—gradually gives way to a more personal, uncertain meditation. The final lines resolve in a softened, luminous image, suggesting that while love may no longer be physically present, its "halation" persists.

Ultimately, "Opera" is a poem about the way art and love intersect in memory, how certain moments become indelible yet elusive. The past, once dazzling, now exists as an afterimage, a haunting presence in the form of music that "lacerates the air." Through the interplay of absence and presence, grandeur and intimacy, the poem captures the way love, like opera, is both ephemeral and enduring.

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