“For justice and pity are a ruler’s greatest qualities.”
—line from Handel’s Serse which I saw last night at Haymarket Opera.
Here’s another one:
"One joy in love is worth more than a hundred turns of fortune."
Offhand I would say both are true, but here’s a caveat. The opera was sung in Italian and I’m reporting what I saw in the supertitles. When I was able to follow the Italian, it seemed that the translation was not literal and even a bit simplified or coarser than the original, but I was not able to follow when either of these lines were being projected, and I haven’t hunted a text for comparison’s sake.
The story was silly, the music wholly accessible (as Handel always seems to be), but you got the sense of a time when, though rulers might be imperfect and lovers unfaithful, humanity felt that it could do better and aimed higher.
We seem to have lost that in America.
—line from Handel’s Serse which I saw last night at Haymarket Opera.
Here’s another one:
"One joy in love is worth more than a hundred turns of fortune."
Offhand I would say both are true, but here’s a caveat. The opera was sung in Italian and I’m reporting what I saw in the supertitles. When I was able to follow the Italian, it seemed that the translation was not literal and even a bit simplified or coarser than the original, but I was not able to follow when either of these lines were being projected, and I haven’t hunted a text for comparison’s sake.
The story was silly, the music wholly accessible (as Handel always seems to be), but you got the sense of a time when, though rulers might be imperfect and lovers unfaithful, humanity felt that it could do better and aimed higher.
We seem to have lost that in America.
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