The Voice

After struggling through Wikipedia's account of the tortured dissections by opera experts of Maria Callas's impossible-to-analyze voice, I felt myself like the man who, wearying of a discourse on astronomy, stumbled from the lecture hall to gaze in silent wonder at the night sky.

Here, Callas sings the role of a daughter pleading with her father not to allow a feud to separate her from the man she loves. "O mio babbino caro" ("Oh My Beloved Father") from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.