By Gary Topping–
Like the Blue Mouse theater that Mike O’Brien, our blogger-in-chief, wrote about recently, the much older Utah Theater in downtown Salt Lake City is also now closed. While the Blue Mouse was a very tiny and humble establishment, the Utah Theater was large and opulent like the Capitol Theater, a venue that had hosted stage plays before it featured movies—a throwback to an elegant era when people would dress up for a big evening on the town.
When we were little kids, my brother and I used to drop a dime on Saturday afternoons to see a Roy Rogers or Gene Autry flick, especially on the rare occasions when they were in Technicolor. Later on, though, when I was in college and graduate school, I was on such a perennially strapped budget that I was able to indulge in few movies, and I didn’t become an avid movie watcher until the advent of the VCR and the DVD player, and even later, Netflix. One afternoon at the Utah Theater, though, is seared in my memory.
My graduate school buddy Dennis Coello and I decided to take in the Merchant-Ivory production A Room With a View which had just come out and was getting a lot of press attention. It was the first—but certainly not the last—Merchant-Ivory movie either of us had seen. As the opening credits began to roll, on the soundtrack Kiri Te Kanawa launched into “O Mio Babbino Caro” from Puccini’s short opera Gianni Schicchi, now a widely performed aria, but one neither Den nor I knew. At the moment her glorious voice hit the high note in the second phrase, we turned and stared at each other in wide-eyed disbelief that anything that beautiful could exist. It lifted us right out of our seats. Fortunately the rest of the movie lived up to that stunning introduction. I like to call it “the perfect movie,” and I’ve seen it many times since then, thrilling to that opening aria every time.
But Den wasn’t through with me. For my birthday or Christmas that year—I can’t remember which– he gave me an album of Kiri Te Kanawa singing Verdi and Puccini arias. Somehow over the years I’ve lost that album, but it was one of my cherished possessions, and Den and I used to spend hours listening to it.
Although Dennis Coello is of Italian ancestry, he doesn’t speak a word of the language, and neither do I. One of our other graduate school buddies asked us once, “Why do you guys enjoy that music so much? You don’t understand what she’s singing.” We looked at each other and gave meaningful nods. “Oh yes we do”! we said. “We get it”!
*Gary Topping is a writer and historian living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is the retired archivist for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City and has written many books and articles.
