A Life on a Truly Operatic Scale

In the world of opera, where performers must learn to summon up emotions caused by fictional incidents of horror, death and destruction, Argentine tenor Dario Volonte stands alone.

He’s seen those things for real and felt the trauma.

Volonte, now starring in Puccini’s “Turandot” at San Diego Opera, was an 18-year-old sailor aboard the aging Argentine cruiser General Belgrano when it was sunk by the British nuclear-powered submarine Conqueror on May 2, 1982, a turning point in the 10-week war over the Falkland Islands.

Out of a crew of 1,093, 323 were killed. Some burned to death in the explosions as torpedoes ripped into the ship’s stern. Others drowned or were frozen in the frigid waters east of Tierra del Fuego.

Volonte spent 29 hours in a rubber boat, tossed by storm waves and helpless to save his shipmates.

The ordeal changed the working-class youth, ending his thoughts of making the military a career, radicalizing his politics and setting him on a path that has made him one of opera’s rising stars in Europe, the United States and South America.

“Turandot” represents Volonte’s first appearance in San Diego. As Calaf, the suitor who solves the ancient riddles and wins the heart of the icy Chinese princess, he earned the opening night’s heartiest applause with his rendition of the famous “Nessun Dorma” aria.

In heavy demand around the world, Volonte engages in 30 to 35 performances a year, spending the rest of his time in Buenos Aires with his wife and 13-year-old daughter.

Two years ago he was a headliner at a concert at the Buenos Aires Opera House to raise money for a memorial for the Argentine war dead.

The Argentine public remains split over the Falklands Islands War and the military junta that was in power at the time and that sent the Argentine army to invade the islands.

So the concert was shunned by many politicians, although the British ambassador attended.

Many of his countrymen would prefer to forget the war and the veterans who fought it, but Volonte remains concerned about the veterans’ plight. An estimated 330 have committed suicide.

Unlike many veterans, Volonte, now 40, has never been reluctant to talk of his experiences. Nor has he been haunted by nightmares, for which he credits his devotion to meditation.

“A lot of people live through a trauma but never understand it; they live it constantly,” he said. “You must confront it, or 10 to 15 years later it will come back.”

Volonte was a junior sailor standing watch near the Belgrano’s engineering rooms at the lowest level of the ship when the torpedoes struck. The sub had tracked the ship for 36 hours and struck without warning, triggering multiple explosions.

“The escape was very organized; there was no panic, but people were burned badly,” the singer said recently, with the help of an Italian interpreter. “The smell of burned flesh was everywhere; you could not escape it.”

In a lesson that sailors for centuries have preached, Volonte said his training saved his life.

“I’m a Virgo, so I’m very organized,” he said. “The lights went out, but I knew exactly the way out, how many steps, how many levels.”

As the crippled ship began to sink, sailors scrambled to lower lifeboats into choppy seas that were already filled with bodies. Within an hour the ship was gone.

“At one moment, a lifeboat, carrying 35 to 40 people, was sucked under the waves and disappeared,” he said. “It seemed like a year of my life watching it, but it took only minutes. There was nothing we could do.”

Rescue was slow and uncertain. It was unclear whether a distress signal had been sent.

Saved at last, Volonte went home to recuperate and saw a television program of tenor Placido Domingo. “I said to myself: I can do that,” he recalled with a laugh.

As with many Argentines, the war had turned him against the junta.

“The war made me reject the Navy and reject the causes of the war,” he said. “I would never say this in my country, but I realized the government had brought the war in an effort to maintain its control over the country.”

The destruction of the Belgrano -- the only ship sunk by a submarine torpedo since World War II -- remains one of the most controversial acts of war in the 20th century. Some critics insist that the lightly armed warship was unfairly targeted, because it was outside the “exclusion zone” invoked by the British during the war.

“I don’t believe England was at all correct, but I understand that England was under the impression that they were trying to protect their territory,” Volonte said. “Sinking us was bad, but invading the islands was worse.”