Fear no danger to ensue,

The Hero loves as well as you.

Ever Gentle ever Smiling

And the Cares of Life beguiling.

Cupids Strew your path with Flowers,

Gather’d from Elysian Bowers.

I am always struck, reading the libretto, how much my experience of hearing baroque opera mimics my experience of reading poetry.

I turn the same phrase, the same verse, over and over in my head.  finding the rhyme, the alliteration, the metaphor.  you don’t just read through a poem like a story in the newspaper.  you linger over it.  repeat it again and again.

these baroque composers are doing just that, putting the words and the melody together and then turning them all around, again and again.  one phrase of poetry becomes an aria.  we don’t move on until we’ve really heard it.  till we understand it.

yesterday Tess and Yulia were rehearsing this duet from the first act while Douglas was getting fitted for his costume.   the tragedy comes later.  we’ll get there. 

first the hero.  and the love.