If you are in any way involved with the opera community/world or just alive in general, you have undoubtedly heard of the Germanwings crash.
At this point, it has taken me days to try to wrap my head around this heart-breaking and absolutely gut-wrenching tragedy, and I still cannot come to terms with it. I sincerely doubt anybody has.
There really are no words I can use to express how truly sorry I am for family, friends, acquaintances, and coworkers of all who perished in the crash. This obviously includes Oleg Bryjak, Maria Radner, her partner, and their child, and the countless others that were on that flight including the class of school children and their teacher, and the three generations of one family who were also on the flight. It is a chilling and horrible loss of life.
I thought that I would find something on YouTube to dedicate to those who were killed, but after spending two hours on there trying to find something that could share our love for those who were lost, I just could not find anything that would do them or this situation any semblance of justice. Besides, after going through several renditions of Ave Maria, Panis Angelicus, and Pie Jesu, I was not only just too distraught to continue, but I could not find anything to properly convey what I have been feeling.
There was one beautiful thing that I did learn from this horrible incident, and that is what a beautiful community we have in the opera world. In the face of horrible things, we are willing to stand together because of the love and adoration we have for our art and those we share it with. Ours may be a world filled with drama and often controversy, but it has been really inspiring to see that we can still come together in the face of such a trivial time.
I would like to ask you all that if there is something in specific you would care to share about Maria, Oleg or anything else to do with this tragedy, be that a song dedication, a memory, or anything else, please submit it and share it with us.
And please, on a final note, just don't forget to tell those you love that you love them. If this incident has taught us anything, it's that life is fleeting, and you will never know what will happen.