Here Comes Treble: The Gift
If you had been blind for seventy years would you welcome the prospect of having your sight restored?
Isabel Bradley tells a fascinating tale.
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Earlier this year Leon and I attended a performance of Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta.
As with most operas, the plot is convoluted and improbable. I will only relate the points which are relevant to this article:
Iolanta, a beautiful princess, is unaware that she is blind. She has grown to womanhood without the concepts of sight, light, colour and vision.
A doctor visits Iolanta’s father, the King, to offer a cure for her blindness. The cure is conditional upon Iolanta learning of her affliction and expressing a desire for sight. Her father fears that if she learns of her misfortune she will be unhappy and refuses to enlighten her or to mention the cure.
In the course of the one-act opera, a traveller, Vaudémont, trespasses into the palace grounds and comes across Iolanta alone in a garden. Attracted by her beauty, he asks her for a red rose. She plucks a white bloom and hands it to him. He protests that he asked for a red flower, and makes his request again. Again, she presents him with a white rose. The young man realises that she is blind and tells her everything that her father and her entourage have kept from her. In the process, of course, they fall in love with each other.
After some persuasion from Vaudémont, Iolanta tells her father that she wishes to see, innocently letting her father know of Vaudémont’s two capital crimes, trespassing and telling the Princess she is blind. Her father sentences him to death.
Iolanta is handed over to the doctor and is cured of her blindness. Once she can see and is happy, her father forgives Vaudémont and repeals the death sentence. Iolanta marries Vaudémont and everyone lives happily ever after…
A few weeks after enjoying the opera, Leon and I spent an evening with friends. Our hostess told us about her seventy-five-year-old cousin. He became blind at the age of five and has been unable to see anything other than variations of light and shade for seventy years. In spite of this ‘disability’, he has lived a full and happy life as a professional violinist, performing around the world. He has a wife and a loving family, with several children and grandchildren who bring him great joy.
Medical science has progressed to a point where it is now possible for the violinist’s sight to be restored. When offered surgery that would restore his eye sight, the violinist, unlike Iolanta, declined the ‘gift’.
Our hostess speculated that, if one has lived successfully and happily without the sense of sight, perhaps it is difficult to contemplate such a major change, bringing with it many new visions.
A few years ago, Leon frequently jogged with a colleague who was blind from birth. At first, Leon used to describe the buildings, trees and other features they passed. His companion often changed the subject to talk about people they knew, business and other topics that were non-visual. He could not make mental pictures of the descriptions at which Leon worked so hard; they bored him. Like the violinist and the princess before she was cured, he had adapted to life without vision, and could not imagine life with it.
If we were offered the gift of a sixth sense, one which we didn’t know existed, would we also refuse it, fearing the complications that would accompany, for example, seeing the future or reading other people’s thoughts?
Each of our senses is a precious gift. Perhaps with this realisation, we will appreciate them more and use them to their fullest potential.
At this holiday season I wish for you the gifts of love, joy, companionship, marvellous memories, and music to make your heart sing throughout the coming year.
Until next time, ‘here comes Treble!’
By Isabel Bradley © Copyright Reserved
