Maria Callas sings Casta Diva (O Pure Goddess) from Bellini’s Norma.
This is one of the most beautiful examples of bel canto I know, and who better to sing it than Callas…
It’s an invocation to the moon goddess by Norma, the Druid priestess who prophesies the fall of Rome. A nice fit for my little blog’s entry into the world of multimedia…..
O Pure Goddess, who silvers
These sacred ancient plants,
Turn thy beautiful semblance on us
Unclouded and unveiled...
Temper, O Goddess,
The brave zeal
Of the ardent spirits,
Scatter on the earth the peace
Thou make reign in the sky…
PS: Here’s a quite lovely one by pop singer Nana Mouskouri, imaginatively set in Greece.
I see you have a Cassandra complex. Can’t you be a little optimistic?
No.
It’s why I’m listening to opera.
I’m not depressed by the bankers. I expect that from them.
I’m depressed by people.
Who are those bad people, can you tell us? I love people who make me happy, so it’s for me to avoid them as I don’t want to get depressed as well.
Oh they are good people. If they were bad that would make it too easy.
I don’t have specific people in mind.
I’m depressed by people who’ve already made up their minds on things.
Depressed about people dividing the world into camps – people who think like us and associate with the kind of people we associate with…
I see it all the time.
All the -isms depress me.
That’s why I don’t associate: I love, or regret and try to forget. Not easy, but efficient.I mean I don’t get depressed.
Seriously; I love opera too, above all Puccini. My favourite aria is E Luccevan Le Stelle of TOSCA. It’s the song of the last night of a man condemn to death. You can’t get more depressed or broken hearted than that. Here’s the link to Carreras version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5zdJB-SyCI
E Lucevan Le Stelle is very good. Puccini is one of my favorites, but I think I like bel canto best.Donizetti, Bellini…
I’m not an expert, but to me Callas conveys raw emotion better than others, even when the voice is less than perfect (as some say).
Lila writes:
“I’m depressed by people who’ve already made up their minds on things.
Depressed about people dividing the world into camps – people who think like us and associate with the kind of people we associate with…
All the -isms depress me.”
This strikes me as bit self-righteous and elitist. It’s a lot easier simply to judge people based on their personal morals and behaviors without regards to ideology and it’s really all that I believe I have a justification to be concerned about anyway.
PS, the aria is nice. I’m far from an opera devotee but I am partial to La Boheme, although I’m sure this is fairly common. I generally dislike the german stuff…too martial for my taste.
I am an elitist (in the sense that I think there are natural elites)…
not in the sense that anyone is above the law (which is the DC sense)
As for self-righteous – I just said the problem with people is they are good…
good people with an agenda have generally done more damage than the criminal class..
that’s another depressing truth
Yes, Callas was far from perfect but her emotional touch is heartbreaking. I used to sing in a choir years ago, now I only sing in the shower. I love German music too, not exactly opera, more choral music, and I’m nuts for Mozart. His Requiem is divine:
http://physics.webplasma.com/requiem.html
This is a good thought for us to have about the people who give us a depression or worse. Just check if you’re not feeling better already just by reading or listening to it.
“I said it’s when they think they are being good..that they do the most harm.”
I don’t see your point at all. I don’t believe for a second that those in power think they’re being “good.” Yes there are do-gooders, but then are merely enablers for those with baser motives.
I also see a very large danger here. If people are led to doubt themselves, they are reduced to the status of prey. To have a bit of the prophet in you is not a bad thing, as long as it’s not associated with the divine (this is probably the main reason I never joined the Bahai’s…(the other being the resistance to foreswear alcohol). In regards to the latter, I have a kindship with H.L. Mencken.
Jeff:
Yes…I like Mencken..in certain things. He’s very funny but then he has limitations.
Paulson and co. know what they are doing.
They are rational, to that degree.
The enablers are not.
And there are many enablers. There aren’t that many truly wicked people.
It’s quite difficult, I think, to be really wicked.
I mean when is the last time you had an urge to push a child under a bus? Or to ignore a child falling under a bus? I think the normal human urge is to help.
It takes quite a bit doing to steel yourself not to.
So my sense is that most people are doing what they see as the right things, all things considered.
Which is what is depressing.
In short, we are all getting the world we want (in some sense)
Everyman:
OK, you matched my Callas, I concede.
Also – try Ave Verum Corpus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX6z79mz4BY
Yes, there are few that are born wicked…the proverbial bad seeds…but our overall civilation has taken upon itself to inculcate wickedness by redefining it as virtue. Thus it takes a few born wickeds, in positions of power…both academic and political…to create a nation full of wickedness.
Do you think that modern civilization redefines wickedness as virtue? Can you specify? Not putting you on the spot, but curious.
Don’t concede, please. Never surrender. No, it’s not A. V.C. It’s part of the Requiem of Mozart. His Dies Irae is also magnificient:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_YSEbAWA0Y
There you have food for thought. People say that ” every saint has his day”, except the Day of Wrath which belongs to God alone.
(Here’s the link to Confutatis too. Today I’m in a requiem night.As I told you, it’s the best remedy for depressions and other pains inflicted by others:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXXHYX7zk1c)
See you.
Lila, of course I do! But this is far from an original idea. It was an essential aspect of Marxism, especially in the Communist Manifesto,
was presented in Julien Benda’s wonderful little book “treason of the intellectuals” and is well explained in Ayn Rand’s magnum opus. Going back further in time, you can find it in Kant and even Augustine…
The moments in time that virtue was actually sought out and honored in human history are rare…the hellenistic era (despite it’s hypocracy on the subject), the renaissance and the enlightenment…perhaps in ancient Persia as well…
Jeff –
Yes, I know it’s not original, but there are different versions of it…
I wondered which you subscribed to. Name the wicked that has become good.
I’m curious, because the rebuttal would be that in reality one good has been substituted for another.
Hmmm, I would say the most wicked is B.F. Skinner; which is a complete refutation of the integrity of individual existence.
Everyman –
Thanks. Oh – that brings back some choir days too..
that voca me section.
The conductor had us sing through paper cups in another part of the Requiem too.
Right on Skinner.
His own daughter took the brunt of his theories, if I recall right
But you know behaviorism was funded by and influenced the growth of the social sciences – that’s a fundamental reason for their approach.
In the UK politics is part of modern history; in the US it’s a science…like economics…
Behavior modification and control were always part of the mindset.
I had a part on that in LOE but I need to expand on it more…
Sorry, our comments missed the reply in time, but I think you understood what I meant about AVC.
During more than a decade my life was almost 50 per cent music, classic and other. We used to sing AVC and Adeste Fidelis and Laudate Dominon and a few Ave Marias, but never anything so complicated as a Requiem Mass.There was this Kirie however, tremendous, we spent weeks with it, it makes me shiver just to listen to it everytime:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0RyQGZP8_0&feature=PlayList&p=35A79F362C7FA959&index=0&playnext=1
And I know Die Zauberflote almost all of it by heart. Love it to bits. What a genius Wolfie was. A blessed creature, there you have one.
My choir days were very brief..a music school requirement..
Yes Zauberflote is one of my favorites – maybe it’s all the symbolism.
But there’s some Mozart that feels Dresden china-ish to me…pretty but formal, brittle, conventional..
Chopin loved Mozart and Opera for the formality.
So much for the opposition of the classical and the romantic.
I did the HS choir route too, plus a vocal jazz group. Then another vocal jazz stint in college, but one for only one year…it was just too much work for one lousy credit hour and I was the only non-music major in it.
Well they do make college a state of the art affair here. And it carries the price tag.
Yes, Wolfie was a child in part all his life, but a divine child he was.
Chopin is not my cup of tea, I’m afraid. Schubert, some Beethoven,and many lieder like Schumman’s and RucKert’s Widmung. I love that poem, it’s Romantic as Romantic goes .I’ve got it framed upon the wall of my room. Here’s a link I found:
http://www.rachelcurmi.com/blog/widmung-dedication-robert-schumann/
A question for you, Lila. Was the Hebrew God defining evil as virtue over the creation of original sin?…the part about the apple and the snake. Was God correct in denouncing Adam and Eve’s discovery of the knowledge of good and evil, or the snake the first free-thinker and liberator of mankind, as Bakunin proposed?
Its o.k. to be depressed, disapointed and disgusted–you don;t have to buy into the delusional happy fest that is the mass culture complex in the U.S.A that demands happy endings and postive developments. Then again, you and I are from places that know that things often turn do not turn out well. The depressiing thing is that america was an exception–or an approximation and it has been driven into the ground by mass stupidity and “well intentioned” governmetn idiocy. Now fine things like Opera, plays with plots, learning musical instruments, grammar are all called “elitist”. I like you am an ELITIST. No, def comedy poetry jam is not the same as Puccini! Obama is not Diocletian! Clinton is not Tallyrand! Its depressding for a culture capable of one enjoying Callas now venerates Brittney Spears–yes very elitist of me.
As for good and evil. Well I leave you to Hoffer:
When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse
You wish!
Everyman –
Thanks for Widmung, I didn’t know it.
And goodnight.
Jeff – Bakunin’s thesis is Blake’s, I believe…
You should also read the Book of J…
I believe Lucifer is the Morning Star for a reason.
(the blog post on Michael and the Dragon addresses this)
Robertindc – That is a very remarkable passage.
I’ll spend tonight on Hoffer.
Hi again
I see you’ve been adding (and cutting) to your original post. This thing about Gaul being Greece isn’t fitting. But Norma was betrayed by her lover and also betrayed her vows. The end of the story is unconvincing, at least for me, because there’s no tradition of death by fire in Druidism (it’s not an Auto de Fe!). They had their sharp sickles not to only cut herbs, that’s for sure. And in this video by Nana M. that’s not the pyre lit in front of her, as the pyre is not lit and it’s behind her. Sorry to correct you, but this is much worse than typos, don’t you think?
Anyway, nothing burns as much as the flames of love. That’s the way the story should end: Norma should be reborn through the flames of love, not turned to ashes like an abandoned old house. Why do people like this horrid finales instead of the wonderful ones? So much attraction for pain and violence and death is such a waste. To die we only have to be alive, and death will come for sure one day. Shouldn’t they care about life instead? When we face a terminal illness, we recheck our priorities. All we want is to live every minute left and to be prepared to die. So, shouldn’t this be our way of living, even when we are young and/or healthy? That’s the reason I picked up this nickname of Everyman. It’s from a medieval morality play, in which Everyman faces Death and he’s not ready to leave. He cannot take anything with him, except his Good Deeds. The point is that any Everyman won’t have the chance the character had on the play: death will not wait for amends.That’s why we should be good while we can, because nobody runs away from Death.(I guess you must know the story of the man who tried to run away from Death to another city, only to know that Death was already waiting for him there). Enough of all this darkness. Love is stronger than death. Let there be light, with the right flames and the right fire.
I thought the fire was before her when I looked at it..in any case, I cut out the line!
Yes, of course I know Everyman….
and less edifying material too..like gammer gurton’s needle.
you mean appointment in Samara, I think.
I think soothsayers tend to go up in flames literally – think of Joan of Arc..burned at the stake.
Aesthetically, it fits, even if its painful.
The fire is before her, but the pyre isn’t. Anyway, Norma’s story is soap-opera to me. Medeia, yes, that’s the real thing, if we’re looking for a powerful Priestess.
———
Cassandras have problems, but not all of them go up in flames, just check the Trojan Cassandra herself. Poor Joan and her voices was too much for men to handle. What else is new? To burn women they cannot control (the witch)is something as old as the world. Alas!
——————–
Yeah, Ralph Roister Doister, anyone? I lectured MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LIT for years.
—————–
And it’s Samara, of course, great story.
————–
Is there any subject you don’t know? Girl, you’re an encyclopedia!!!
See you.