Grandad Sings Italian Opera - Volume One

When I was a kid my mother gave away a pile of 78s. She gave them to a kid that had a wind up gramophone and collected 78s to play on it. I didn't know what 78s were at the time, or why she had them or what they meant.

They were her father's. Her father liked opera and bought 78s of people like Jussi Bjoerling, Caruso or even crooners such as Lanza. He was a decent tenor himself and liked to sing at church or embarass my Gran by serenading her while she scrubbed potatoes at the kitchen sink or shelled peas.

My grandfather was a man of dark clouds and bursts of light. I think in the days of light he must have been a man of great charm.

He died when I was five. Same year as my Dad.

My fondest memory of my Grandfather is a bike ride on the Tairei Plain. He sat me on the handlebars of his heavy, black bicycle, between his arms, and pedalled out into the long, deserted back roads behind Mosgiel. Here are the fields, and ditches overrun by weeds, the high holly hedges and hills off in the distance lying like a woman on her side.

Who knows what parts of him are parts of me, but I suppose at least I can say that he's the reason I love opera. He passed on his enthusiasm to my mother and she passed that on to me.