Ebben……Ne Andro Lontana
Jul 9th, 2009 by oldfogey
From Catalani’s famous opera is one of the most hypnotic and haunting arias in all opera. Wally (absurdly named young woman) has been banished by her cruel father for refusing to marry the wealthy, but old, man he had arranged for her. She is a strange, rather wild woman, a child of nature who longs to live in the mountains. She determines to leave - ’I will go far away, alone, as far away as the sound of a distant tolling bell.’ Her voice mimics the insistent tolling of the bell, each word sounded on the same note, as if in a trance, before her anguish at leaving her mother’s home forever.
The aria is famous too as part of the soundtrack of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s cult 1981 film ‘Diva’.
It is sung be the magnificent Italian soprano, Maria Chiara.












