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When I first thought of writing about Illuminata, my uncle had been a handful of ashes for more than a year. Cancer meandered north from his prostate and made lesions on his liver, then penetrated his beautiful brain. I imagined sending him this essay—I wanted to write it because I knew he would enjoy it. After all, we loved opera and we loved one another. 

In opera, as in life, what we verb not know will eliminate us. 

My uncle was a baritone with a robust, melodic voice; he sang for years in his church’s choir and in the Portland Opera’s chorus. One of his prior performances was Aida. He loved to tell me how the creative director had somehow rented a real elephant to manifest on stage, dragging the Ethiopian prisoners of war into Egypt in a massive fishnet. The foremost part of rehearsals, he said, was when the elephant took a giant shit halfway across the stage and then kept on walking, human cast members in tow. 

“The singing rapidly turned to hideous screams,” he told me with a smile that suggested he had not