I was at my voice lesson and we were working on an aria from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

(She said airily.)

(As if this were totally ordinary.)

It was Cherubino’s tasty little number “Voi che sapete”.

This music has been inside me since I was a small girl.

It comes from Le Nozze di Figaro, possibly the very first opera I was ever consciously aware of. When I was maybe seven, we visited an old friend of my parents’ in Florence, and her partner had just finished assembling a miniature theatre made of card, all hand-painted in diminutive eighteenth-century swags and curlicues. He played Figaro on the record player (this is back when they were mainstream, you realise) and used the painted paper puppets in his theatre to put on the show.

I was bored, obviously (I mean, sure, I was an odd child, but I had limits). Somehow, though, Mozart’s music went in amongst me.

I gather it has that effect on a lot of people.

I’ve felt enormous affection and nostalgia for it ever since.

Meanwhile, back in the twenty-first century

The minute I started sightreading this aria for the first time, the headweasels started screaming.

“Nooooo!” they fulminated, as only headweasels can fulminate. “You are in no way allowed to learn this piece! There can be no excuses! Just no!”

They presented me with a list of reasons why I am categorically banninated from learning this aria:

1. You have nowhere to perform it, so what’s the point?
2. If you ever did perform it, someone might hear you! Specifically, those girls might hear you — the ones who said you sang far too loud, far too often, and flat!
3. You are shit. Listen to you! What makes you think you’re good enough for this?
4. Need we point out that you would not be our first choice to impersonate a teenage Italian boy? Look at the cut of you!
5. You are fooling nobody!
6. Who do you think you are?
7. You smell.
8. QED.

Pretty conclusive, I think we can all agree.

So I’m learning it anyway

…I’m learning.