I have been watching the snow coverage on tv with the sound off, Mozart’s Idomeneo coming from my computer instead.  I’ve just started working on this opera, in the first stage of projection design, which is a lot of listening and feeling.  My Italian isn’t very good, nowhere near fluent.  I have to listen for the feeling of where we are in the story.  Mozart makes it easy.

It’s funny background music for the news coverage.  Idomeneo is about, among other things, sailors lost at sea and the wrath of Neptune.  Channel 5 is spending a lot of time in Scituate, they must be watching the tide and the seawalls.  Lots of panning from crashing surf to nearby homes.  Lots of Mozart crescendo-ing and full opera choruses.  Here’s what I got so far from my morning.

AUDIO                                                        

CHORUS NEARBY                                           
Ye gods, have mercy!
Help, o just gods!
Turn your gaze on us …

CHORUS IN THE DISTANCE
Ye gods, have mercy!
The sky, the sea, the wind
oppress us with fear …

CHORUS NEARBY
Ye gods, have mercy!
Pitiless fate thrusts us
into the arms of dreadful death …

VIDEO

Some lonely figure holding a stick mic in a parka, leaning into the wind

Snowmaggedon.  Ye gods!  Help us!