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HOW YOU PROBABLY KNOW THIS TUNE: From countless commercials — for perfume, sports cars, pasta — that wants to emphasize a product’s Italian roots. And featured in many movies, most recently, Tom Ford’s A Single Man.
‘WALLY’ WORLD: Wally, the star-crossed heroine of Alfredo Catalani’s four-act opera, is a plum role for any soprano of repute, with an all-time great death scene and a straight-to-the-heart aria now firmly ensconced in the repertoire. (Productions are rarely staged, apparently because of the prohibitive costs in recreating the climactic — and deadly — avalanche.) The aria, “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” (coarsely translated as “well, I’m outta here”), is sung in the first act, after Wally refuses the hand of the young man her father prefers, and chooses banishment to the snow-filled mountains, where she hopes to reconnect with her one true love (who just happens to be the son of her father’s mortal enemy). Her emotional lament — in which she vows never to return — transcends words.
MEMORABLY USED IN … The 1981 film Diva, as one of the arias sung by the reclusive opera star of this French cult classic.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTLF9TIx6lE]
LIST: The All-TIME 100 Songs