Utah nurse prescribes something extra: Opera

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Luiz Meneghin, a nurse at Aspen Ridge Transitional Rehabilitation, uses opera to assist in his patients' healing process.
He performs at the facility three times a week, believing music transforms the care center experience.
A former 'America's Got Talent' contestant, Meneghin also writes children's stories.

MURRAY — Luiz Meneghin takes vitals, dispenses medicine and attends to other medical needs of his mostly elderly patients. But sometimes standard medicine isn't enough. So three times a week, he breaks out into song.

Meneghin, who works as a nurse at Aspen Ridge Transitional Rehabilitation in Murray, grew up poor in Brazil. His family of five shared a one-room, 200-square-foot house. He inherited a love of music from his father, who one day brought home a set of classical recordings.

"We would listen to those all day long," he told KSL.

Years later, on a lunch break, he visited a book and music store and listened to a recording of Andrea Bocelli singing Puccini's "Nessun dorma" and fell in love with opera. He began singing along with the recording and later took singing lessons.

In 2012, he auditioned for "America's Got Talent" and landed a spot on the reality show. He didn't win the competition but had his moment in the national spotlight.

These days, when he's not working with patients or spending time with his family, he's working on a movie script and writing children's stories adapted from the stories he told his own children. He published one of those stories, "The Hairy King."

And he hasn't stopped singing. He has a residency of sorts at Aspen Ridge's two Salt Lake-area locations, where he performs three times a week.

Luiz Meneghin appeared on "America's Got Talent" in 2012. (Photo: America's Got Talent)

During lunch at the facility in Midvale, Meneghin set up his "orchestra," a portable stereo, and sang "Ave Maria," '"O Solo Mio," "Nessun dorma" and a selection of other operatic hits.

"Music is healing. It can heal people," he said.

He says it "makes them feel that they are not really in a care center, you know," he said. "It's something else. The moment becomes something else."

A few months ago, after a patient who regularly attended his performances passed away, Meneghin read her obituary. It listed her favorite things in life — his singing was one of them.

"I thought, my goodness, you know, when I saw that, wow, that's something," he said.

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Peter Rosen

A broadcast journalist for more than 35 years, Peter works in the Special Projects Unit of KSL-TV as a reporter, editor, photographer and occasional music composer. He has won regional Emmys and awards from the National Press Photographers Association. He is the recipient of NPPA’s national Award for Reporting and a national Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Peter began his journalism career at age 13 writing for weekly newspapers in New Jersey. He has called Utah home since 1991. He likes nothing more than exploring Utah with his wife, Holly, and their two boys.