David X Novak
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Justice and Pity (or Possibly, Giustizia e Clemenza)

10/3/2018

 
“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.


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