Birdsong

I could have been buying a pig-in-a-poke when I purchased our canary nearly a decade ago. The pet shop that day was overly crowded and noisy, clerks frenziedly busy with little chance, or inclination, to give any customer special attention. The selection of a canary was limited to a mere three sharing a small room of cages housing scores of parakeets, finches, doves and parrots. All chirping, shrieking, clattering, clucking! A din. I'd come to listen to and compare the song of available canaries, but it was impossible to isolate any sound or its source.

Aside from the three upstaged --intimidatingly silenced, or else non-singer females -- canaries in the cacophonous aviary, there was one other in a small cage atop the checkout counter. I kept watching its throat for vibrations, and detected that it probably was singing. Although the clang of the cash register beside its cage and a loud waterfall display behind the counter, accompanying the shrieking parrots, yipping puppies, caterwauling kittens and voluble shoppers, negated anything so subtle as birdsong. When finally able to get a harassed employer to give me attention, I asked if the canary on the counter was a male and a good singer. "He never shuts up," was the abrupt response. Sale, but not without doubt that in my impatience to have a canary in the house, I'd purchased an untested product.

A given in manuals on the nurturing of canaries is that they require a period of settling into a strange environment. Don't expect them to be normally active, and certainly to sing, until they've spent a few days, even a week in the new habitat. Giorgio broke all rules. He burst into song immediately after release from the small dark carton from which he left the pet shop and was placed in a flight cage I'd purchased. Was very active, and quick to sample food and drink. We soon discovered that he was rarely quiet, that his song was strong and beautiful, and that minutes of silence were quickly broken, greeted with melody if he heard running water or music from the stereo. No doubt, the kitchen tap substituted for the splashings of the shop fountain he'd heard, and our stereo for the "music" reaching his ears from hundreds of creatures sharing the emporium he'd known since a nestling. He preferred vocal music to instrumental, our large collection of opera recordings eliciting wondrous bursts of accompanionment to sopranos, tenors, quartets, choruses. His name Giorgio commemorated a basso we'd known who'd made it to the great opera stages of the world.

Neighbors loitered near our home during warm summer days when house doors were open to hear Giorgio sing. And the song frequently lured tourists on Canyon Road into our studio/gallery. Business asset? On a few occasions, visitors told me that curiosity brought them into the studio because they'd assumed such exceptional birdsong had to come from something mechanical! There was even a breeder of canaries, visiting Santa Fe from out of state, who heard Giorgio and came in from the street to ask if he were available for rental!

One of the many rules Giorgio's broken is to live longer than the 5 years most references estimate as canary lifespan. Giorgio's entered his 10th year, and did have me thinking in recent months that he was nearing the end. Decline started with loss of wing feathers which prevented his flying, and had never before happened with annual molting. Not just flying -- he couldn't flit from perch to perch, spent most of his time huddled forlornly on the bottom of his cage. With never a sound. An octogenarian myself, not unfamiliar with the limitations of aging, I wondered what he was feeling. No running water, no stereo music stimulated him. But he stirred often enough to visit the seed and water cups, and I told myself he wasn't suffering. Morning after morning, when I uncovered his cage, it wouldn't have surprised me to see an inert body. But then wing feathers began to grow back, he was able to gain lower perches. Phoenix-like, Giorgio, following months of non-flight, was brightly hopping about. And if still not singing, well, wasn't that to be expected. Opera stars give up the stage at advanced age. But he's made a Comeback! Beginning over many days with chirps, peeps, then short trills, a few runs at the sound of water or the stereo, the voice has grown impressively strong and beautiful again, and he gifts us with it many hours every day. Last week a local FM radio station broadcast the 1962 recording (remastered) of Madama Butterfly starring Leontyne Price and Richard Tucker, Erich Leinsdorf conducting. Giorgio was transported, his song as strong, clear and beautiful as in his early years, in crescendo with soprano and tenor for every rise in aria or duet. Un bel di!

Next month the New York Metropolitan Opera inaugurates its Saturday radio broadcasts of the 2009-2010 season. I'll be listening. Not merely to the Met's great roster of stars, but to Giorgio.