La vida breve (The Short Life)

La vida breve (The Short Life)

It is hard for a Palestinian boy who is unlucky from birth.
It is hard to be born as an anvil Instead of hammer.

On Sunday at the Carnegie Hall in the New York City, Charles Detoit, a conductor of Orchestre Symphonique De Montreal, has given a concert that features three parts performance with chorus, guitar quartets Los Romeros, and Opera, La vida breve.

First of all, Charles Detoit, who has been working at the Symphony since 1977, was a brilliant, passionate and energetic conductor in directing and leading a cornucopia of 150-member orchestra, four guitarists, eight opera singers and three hundred chorus members.

Los Romeros, known as The Royal Family of the Guitar and encompassed three generations of concert artists with their sons, Celino and Lito, have dazzled the audience in the realm of classic guitar.

The last presentation of opera La vida breve depicts ordinary people going about their daily lives at the foot of the Albaicin hill, where many gypsies live with rich villagers who despise the indigents but love gypsy women.

The prima donna sings symphonic poem imbued with lyrics that deplore the bitterness of poor life and treacherous betrayal of her rich lover.

When some parts of the lyrics were transferred to the scenes of the Occupied Territories in Palestine, especially the tragic photo of a12-year old boy, Mohammed al-Durah who was pinned down, terrified with his father behind the concrete manhole entrance and eventually murdered by Israeli automatic fires, people of the world may feel and hear the agony of an innocent kid whose fate was as surely destined for death.

In South Korea in the early 60s, the death of a 15-year-old kid, Kim Joo-Yul, has served as catalyst that brought eventual downfall of dictator Synman Rhee, when the boy’s decomposed body was found floating in the sea, with his head pierced with 30-inch canister of an unexploded tear gas that was fired by the riot police.

Here are excerpts of the lyrics from La vida breve, “the short life”.

This poor little birdIs going to die.
How sad it is!
Poor little thing.

It’s hard for a boy
Whose unlucky from birth!
It’s hard to be born an anvil
Instead of a hammer.

The flower that blooms in the morning
Is dead at the end of the day.
But how happy the flowers are
For they hardly know
The bitterness of life.

A sad and lonely bird
Came into my garden to die.
It fell and died at once.
Better to die
Than to live so sad and alone.
There is nothing as sure as death,
And no great consolation.

On with the job
There is work to be done;
So that others can enjoy life,
We must sweat and strain
And endure all this pain.

Long live those who laugh!
Death to those who weep!
A poor man’s life
Is full of care
And best soon ended.

What have I done
To deserve to die like this,
To be killed like this,
Without any cause at all?
Without reason or justice.

Why was I born
To die like this?
Like the lonely bird,
And the flower that fades
Just as it is beginning to live.

It is better this way than to go on
And suffer this fearful pain
It is better, far better, to die!

It’s hard to be born an anvil
Instead of a hammer.