Opera performances are an excellent amalgamation of musical drama and visual artistry, making them an incredibly immersive and enriching experience. For star soprano Lisette Oropesa, her Verdi performance at the Teatro Regio di Parma onstage in Italy turned out to be a unique affair after she was assisted by a young fan, who boldly stood up in the audience and sang a vital part of her song, per Classic FM.
Representative Image Source: The soprano Lisette Oropesa with the clarinetist David Shifrin and the pianist Gilbert Kalish performing Schubert's "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen." (Photo by Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images)
It all started when acclaimed Lisette Oropesa was singing Violetta's "Sempre Libera" (Always Free) from Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata as an encore for her recital. It is meant to be sung in a duet by a male and female singer. She sang four encores, with the last one having a male tenor. In the opera’s staging, the tenor playing Alfredo is usually off stage, as if he were singing to Violetta from beneath her balcony outside.
Image Source: Lisette Oropesa as Norina in Gaetano Donizetti's Don Pasquale at Glyndebourne Opera House on July 13, 2017 in Glyndebourne, East Sussex. (Photo by Robbie Jack/Corbis via Getty Images)
Since her performance was a solo recital, no tenor was present. Present among the crowd was Liu Jianwei, a student at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Nicolini di Piacenza and a long-time fan of the Cuban-American soprano, who was there to watch the epic performance. The fan was familiar with the lyrics and noticed no accompaniment in the first bar, so he joined. Since no male singer responded to Oropesa’s Violetta in the first bar, he took matters into his own hands and joined in during the second bar.
Oropesa was stunned to discover the surprise entrant as her young tenor fan lent his voice to her recital. To keep it spontaneous, Oropesa continued her performance and staged a dramatic entranced "Oh!" followed by a "Grazie," which was an original addition to this surprise moment.
Image Source: The soprano Lisette Oropesa (Manon Lescaut), center, and the baritone Brett Polegato (De Bretigny), third from right, (he has grey hairs and mustache) in Jules Massenet's "Manon" at the Metropolitan Opera House on Friday, September 20, 2019. (Photo by Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images)
After the surprise appearance at the recital, Liu spoke about his love for the artist and said, "I stood up to sing because Lisette Oropesa is a musician I love very much and I happened to have learned this opera before.” At the same time, he admitted that he would not risk pulling a singing stunt like this again. "It is definitely not something worthy of pride, nor something worthy of being advocated." He politely conveyed a message to the audience, "Please don’t interrupt singers when they are singing on stage. It’s impolite behavior. Don’t imitate me and I will never do this again in the future."
After the concert, Liu apologized to Oropesa for his intrusive act during her performance. Surprisingly, Oropesa was not miffed with his fan and instead appeared grateful to her impromptu duet partner. The opera singer was happy to take pictures with him and give him an autograph.
Image source: TikTok | @ashleysokay
Image Source: TikTok I @edgeomatic
The video was uploaded on TikTok by a user named @babatunde_hiphopera and it went viral with over 1 million views. TikTok users appreciated the young fan for his efforts and congratulated him for assisting the star.
You can follow @babatunde_hiphopera on TikTok for similar wholesome content.
Editor's note: This article was originally published on April 30, 2024. It has since been updated.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.