Earlier this year, mezzo soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and sang a collection of Neruda poems set to music by her husband Peter Lieberson. On July 3rd, after a long illness, Ms. Lieberson died at her home in New Mexico. Kimmel Center audiences were very lucky to hear her sing since she'd been performing only sporadically during the past eighteen months. During last March's performance, audiences heard Ms. Lieberson sing Neruda's Sonnet XCII, especially fitting to remember today:
My love, if I die and you don’t—,
My love, if you die and I don’t—,
let’s not give grief an even greater field. No expanse is greater than where we live.Dust in the wheat, sand in the deserts,
time, wandering water, the vague wind
swept us on like sailing seeds.
We might not have found one another in time.This meadow where we find ourselves,
O little infinity! we give it back.
But Love, this love has not ended:just as it never had a birth, it has
no death: it is like a long river,
only changing lands, and changing lips.