I’m listening to some of these at school right now and my guts hurt and I’m wiping my nose from eating spicy potato chips and it basically looks like I’m listening to opera while crying and in a way it appears that I am but not for the obvious reasons.

Track six is the singing of a Pablo Neruda poem over a classical arrangement by Lieberson. “Amor mio, si muero y tu no mueres” (“My love, if I die and you don’t”)

It’s beautiful. Check out the write-up on it:

It’s a frightening question couples never want to face: who will die first? Set to a love sonnet by Pablo Neruda, Lieberson’s sumptuously scored music radiates the tenuous warmth of an Indian summer. And, sadly, less than eight months after this live recording was made, Lieberson himself faced the answer to that question. His wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who sings this performance, died from cancer at age 52.

Oof.