Virginia Opera's 'Elixir of Love' is a musical tonic for wellness

As a physician, Victor Sonnino understands the link between opera and wellness. He’s happy to use the live music tonic on himself, too.

For every Virginia Opera production, including the current one, “The Elixir of Love,” he usually attends several rehearsals and a few performances.

Granted, he’s on the board of Virginia Opera, but board members aren’t expected to show up so often. He uses his free, behind-the-scenes access because he loves to watch the productions evolve.

For him, when the audience starts coming, that’s an extension of the show.

Sonnino, 61, is a neurosurgeon fascinated with the effects of music on listeners. He believes music is good for you, that it can improve your health, even save your life.

Seated among patrons at the Harrison Opera House, he can readily visualize what’s happening beneath the careful coiffures and fresh haircuts whenever music is in the air.

He pictures the “sensory input” of music soaring into the right side of the brain, which is the artistic side, and steering straight into the sensory cortex. From there, it jets to the deep core of the brain, to the amygdala.

Then the music zooms to the motor cortex, which can cause muscles to move, he said. “The classic example would be marching music. It makes you move to a faster rhythm.” All of this takes place in microseconds, he said.

These physiological actions have a real effect. Sonnino has witnessed how music alters brain waves and heart and respiratory rates.

Anita Boles, executive director of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare,  said the “healing power of music is evident” and has been proven in research conducted over the past half century. Her organization, founded in 1991 and based in Washington, D.C., gives awards and grants for such studies, including a recent one exploring how burn patients in intensive care units experience less pain and anxiety through music therapy.

With music, Sonnino said, “you can quiet down an EKG. You can take away some of the spikes, some of the more intense activity going on in the brain.” Stroke victims and people with Parkinson’s disease have improved through music, too, he said.

As a physician specializing in the brain, the spine and the nervous system, Sonnino has used music as part of his treatment for people with increased pressure on the brain caused by a tumor or from trauma, such as a car accident.

“We found that by having these patients listening to music that was familiar to them, we flattened those peaks of brain pressure.” As part of a cluster of emergency approaches to regulate body function, music can actually save a person’s life, he said.

“The brain does not tolerate increased pressure for prolonged periods of time,” he said. “It will have dire effects.”

The type of music is important, he said. Whether classical or country, it has to be music that is familiar and soothing to the patient.

“We would either put ear phones on them or have some background music in the room,” he said. “You would see the heart rate settle down, the breathing settle down, brain-pressure waves settling down.”

If Sonnino was a trauma patient, there’s no contest. He would choose opera as his healing potion. “I’ve always felt a sense of well-being,” he said, “coming out of an opera.”

Last week, Sonnino and his wife, Laura, attended student night for “The Elixir of Love.”

The day before, the couple had moved to Norfolk from Elizabeth City, N.C., where he is chief medical officer at Albemarle Hospital. (He retired as a practicing neurosurgeon in 2006.) That was the only day he took off.

The hospital meetings didn’t stop. Laura was busy, too, coaching opera singers on Italian, her native tongue.

Still, they made time for student night, which is a Wednesday night dress rehearsal with middle and high school students in the audience.

Student nights remind him of his years in Venice, Italy, from age 13 to 27. His opera-loving, Italian parents had left New York City, where he attended Metropolitan Opera with them, to return home. Sonnino studied and practiced medicine in Italy, and music.

He saw the world’s finest singers on stage at the famous Venetian opera house, La Fenice, where he later performed in modest, walk-on roles, such as a soldier. He attended many rehearsals, studied singing and ended up, beginning at age 19, reviewing opera and classical concerts for Italian publications. For two years, he also produced an opera radio show there.

He remembers when Italian opera companies began offering student nights, but the Italian youths were more sedate than these Americans, he said.

At the Norfolk opera house, when the couple strolled into the marble-floored lobby, Sonnino smiled broadly at the scene. Energized youngsters in festive dress filled the room with deafening chatter.

Taking his seat toward the rear of the theater, he noticed a dozen youngsters leaning over the rail near the front of the stage, looking into the orchestra pit. Curious, he approached them and saw that a few were chatting with a bass player.

“You don’t see adults doing this,” he said, grinning.

For the opening scene,  the lead soprano sits in a swing tethered to a tree branch as farm workers labor. Sonnino looked over at a few rapt, slack-jawed youngsters in a nearby row. “Those kids are just sitting on the edges of their seats,” he said, pleased.

Then he leaned back, arms crossed over his chest, the slight smile of a buddha statue on his face, to watch Donizetti’s comic opera. The opera follows a young farmer who buys a “love potion,” which is just wine, from a huckster to try to get a beautiful woman to fall in love with him.

Sonnino kept one eye out for the youngsters’ reactions, which made him beam. They laughed at the comic vanity of a preening sergeant, and a farmer’s drunkenness after downing the love potion.

They applauded the antics of the traveling quack peddling the phony elixirs. At the end, when the true lovers finally kiss, the kids went wild with whistles, laughter and applause.

“I knew that was coming!” Sonnino said, chuckling.

Back in the lobby, watching the youngsters depart, he pointed out the wide smiles on so many faces. “I’d like to think it’s the music. Look at those two kids. Look at these girls.”

Are they healthier for having attended? “I would like to think so,” he said.

“If I were to hook somebody up to an EKG machine in the theater, hook them up to a blood pressure and heart rate machine, I would be able to show some slowing of the brain waves, or some speeding of the brain waves, depending on what’s going on.

“And while people equate stress release with a slower heart rate and respiratory rate, and to a great extent they are correct, it doesn’t mean that a higher heart rate is negative for the body.”

When exercising, the heart rate is intentionally increased to create better circulation.

“I think that’s the important issue when we try to analyze why music, why opera has this beneficial effect. Because it actually changes the body’s physiological functions during the course of it."

“We wouldn’t be able to live if we always had our heart rate too high or too low, but we want it there periodically for the stimulation effect or for the relaxation effect.”

Besides all that, experiencing opera, or any live concert, “is a way of rounding out who we are as individuals. It doesn’t negate the exercise and wellness programs all of us should abide by. It’s part of the complete body treatment.”

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com