Awakening at 3:51 am (to a performance of Richard Strauss’s comic opera Intermezzo, which has nothing to do with any of what follows, beyond evoking operatic singing), what was in my head was the word barramundi (pronounced boldly, with a big tongue-trilled R in it, so that it was simultaneously ponderous and ridiculous). I immediately recalled why the name of an Asian / Oceanic fish was calling to me: a recent Facebook posting by an American who was startled to find the fish on sale in a supermarket near them.
So: the fish, in the water and on the table. Then the name: metrically, a double trochee, of the back-accented type (Barbarina, ` ˘ ´ ˘ ) rather than the front-accented type (manicurist, ´ ˘ ` ˘ ) — which led me to operatic singing, not Strauss’s Intermezzo, but the marvels of Verdi’s Rigoletto, in particular the duet Si vendetta, whose title is, well, yes, a back-accented double trochee.
