The song of sorrow shall ring laughingly in your soul.… Read more
When the sorrow comes, blasted lie the gardens of the soul,
wither and perish joy and singing.
Dark is life, dark is death!
[…]
The heavens are ever blue and the Earth
shall stand sure, and blossom in the spring.
We start the week with a comical work, a madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi set after a poem by Ottavio Rinuccini, an Italian 16th century poet considered to be the first opera librettist. In this sonnet we hear a plea to Zephyrus, the bringer of spring in Greek mythology, to come and enliven the air, the branches, the mountains and valleys, everything around our hero who goes back and forth between singing and crying, being tormented by love .… Read more