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But, less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us the best of themselves.
Art rectifies the failings of our minds: we are simply not very good at grasping the fact of ourselves as time-bound creatures…. Art too can help, for it is an imaginative force that goes ahead of the present and prepares our rationale and sensory selves for where nature will eventually lead us.
An ever-evolving aesthetic loop exists between one's early experiences of certain works of art, literature, and music, and one's deepening appreciation of these works as time passes and life is lived. Such works may or may not be acclaimed by others, but are distinguished by taking root in us and becoming personal touchstones revisited frequently as cultural companions. Just a few examples of my own would include Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, Updike's Rabbit Angstrom, the paintings of William Turner and Howard Hodgkin, Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool, and, in opera, Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen, Mozart's The Magic Flute, and Puccini's Tosca. The latter is particularly apropos for the purpose of this essay, not only because it is a touchstone work that has become more resonant as I have lived with it over the decades, but also because I believe its latent content across its three acts implicitly symbolizes an important existential and psychoanalytic theme.
In this spirit, I will explore the manner in which the three major arias in Tosca portray a developmental arc: from the innocence of youthful idealism, to the encounter with the inevitable obstacles the world presents to this idealism, and, ultimately, to an integration characterized by acceptance of the transience and mystery of the aesthetic object — in this case, life and