PS - Why Has Emily, The Subway Soprano, Captivated Us All? This Scene From The Shawshank Redemption Describes It Best ...

I said in my first post on Emily Zamourka, that her soulful rendition of Puccini's "O Mio Babbino Caro" in the subway and her situation ...



 
... reminded me of Fantine in Les Miserables. And of course her unlikely, overnight discovery reminded us all of Susan Boyle's legendary rendition of Fantine's song, "I Dreamed a Dream," from Les Miserables. 

However, there's something else to it ...

I think the opera scene from Shawshank Redemption describes it best ...


 

 The scene where innocent and wrongly convicted of murdering his wife (it was a random psycho who murdered her), prisoner and former finance whiz, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), is in the warden's office, fixing the books for the warden, who is embezzling money.  

While the guard is in the bathroom, Andy locks the guard in the bathroom and himself in the Warden's office and plays the duet aria from The Marriage of Figaro over the PA system, though music was disallowed for the prisoners. 

The effect it had on everyone, in such a corrupt, angry, violent, political place, is narrated by Andy's best friend and fellow inmate, Red (Morgan Freeman) ... 

"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are better left unsaid."

"I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it."

"I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream ..."

"It was as if some beautiful bird had flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away ... and for the briefest of moments ... every last man in Shawshank felt free."

  ~"Red" (Morgan Freeman), The Shawshank Redemption -

(Which many people don't know was written by Stephen King - yes, that Stephen King - of horror pop fiction fame.