A well-off English stockbroker arrives in Tahiti in hope of becoming a true artist and in search of his niche. Deadly ill and self-isolated for several years, he creates his magnum opus before he dies. Based on the life of the vagabond painter Paul Gauguin, the famous novel The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham resonates with many real-life examples of talented people creating their masterpieces in conditions of isolation. Their list includes the cholera-quarantined Alexander Pushkin and the KGB-exiled Joseph Brodsky.
Their stories make me think about currently quarantined opera singers in Italy and, particularly, about transnationally mobile migrant-artists. As the Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically escalated in Italy, the country went into forced lockdown as of 9 March 2020, a few days after the closure of opera houses and the cancellation of all artistic events. How do transnational opera singers, whose prior lives were full of socialization, manage to live through the Covid-19 quarantine in such conditions?
Opera singers are, in fact, people who, in many cases, do not have permanent jobs but rotate geographically on short-term contracts and depend on the income from each performance. As noted in The Definitive Guide for Opera Singers Auditioning, such circulation also impacts on their work-life balance because they often find themselves separated from their spouses and children.
