Tonight I and the whole nation will be watching the returns of the Democratic primary elections and caucuses in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island.

But I'll also be thinking back to the Madison Opera's production of Aaron Copland's "The Tender Land," which I saw last Saturday night during one of its six sold-out productions in the small 200-seat Promenade Hall of the Overture Center.

It was, simply, a wonderful and first-rate production of a rarely performed chamber opera. It featured fine acting and fine singing from a largely even, high quality and convincing cast, although UW soprano Julia Faulkner surely stood out as the mother.

This quintessentially American music was superbly performed, even if it was a tad loud at times for the intimate performance space, by John DeMain who conducted a dozen or so members of the Madison Symphony Orchestra.

There was much to be moved by in this story of a young girl coming to adulthood and dealing with love and separation, maturity and disappointment. (In the Jamie Young photo above, Laurie (played by Kathryn Skemp) sits with her farm hand suitor Martin, played by Joel Burcham.)

But one particular scene moved me and made me think that the Madison Opera's general manager Allan Naplan was inadvertently, or maybe prophetically, prescient in his timing of this special third production of the Madison Opera's season.

At one point, the neighbors come over for a potluck dinner and some hoe-down type dancing to celebrate Laurie's graduation from high school.

Mind you, this is all taking place on a poor farm in the Midwest during the Great Depression.

And they all seemed so happy. Misery had no place at the gathering.

Do you still wonder what Barack Obama's appeal is? It was right there on stage, filling your ears and eyes.

It was the same appeal that FDR had when he stood before the Capitol and took his oath of office and told a nation ripped apart by the hardest of hard times that "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

That's the power of hope.

That's the power of being told and of saying yourself "Yes We Can."

If we just care about each other, if we just remain optimistic and work hard and pull together, we can do anything. We can survive and we can prevail.

That's what Aaron Copland and Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood then.

And that is what Barack Obama and his supporters understand now. It is time to end the era of winners and losers that started by Ronald Reagan, who in his smarter younger years was himself once a New Deal Democrat.

That is how America survived the Great Depression: By turning all those isolated and fearful "I"s into a collective and hopeful "we."

And deep down that is the appeal for both Republicans and Democrats about Barack Obama, best I can tell.

Sure, it was only an opera.

Except it wasn't only an opera.

People who appreciate that deeper dynamic or pscyhology, who know that hope and unity trump policy specifics, also know the power of inspiration, of people power, of what 1960s types like me used to call "participatory democracy." Simply put, it means "I take care of you and you take care of me."

As Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Tutu has said: "Am I my brother's keeper? No, I am, my brother's brother."

Anyway, my heartfelt thanks to all the many people who made the opera such a wonderful and unforgettable experience in that close and personal space where history seemed current, and fictitious characters seemed as true-to-life as real people.

Did you see the Madison Opera production? What did you think of it?

Do you think of particular works of art when you think of certain political candidates?

Or of certain politicians when you think of certain works of art?

Let Art Talk know.