Now that Easter is over, we are reverting to my other current musical obsession, which would be Shakespeare operas! I told my teacher a few weeks ago that I wanted to have an Elizabethan / Shakespeare theme for my exam, only I had way too much repertoire, and she responded by suggesting a few more operas to look at… This was not entirely helpful.
One of the ones she suggested, however, was Rossini’s Otello, and specifically Desdemona’s Willow Tree aria. I’d been looking at this one, but couldn’t quite justify it in my (already excessively long program), but of course now I had to look at it again, and quickly realised that I am constitutionally incapable of resisting Rossini (it’s all those tiny little hemi-demi-semiquavers that do it for me. I have no self-control when it comes to teeny tiny notes…).
Judge for yourself whether you could resist this.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUC6bLj94rQ&hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0]