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Pastimes : Opera

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To: markay who wrote (24)	9/21/1999 6:09:00 PM
From: Henry Volquardsen	of 38

will do. Never had a daiquiri in New Orleans but thos hurricanes sure kick some butt. On the opera front I was listening to Nabucco today. Nabucco is short for Nabucodonosor which is the Italian for Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who destroyed the Temple of Solomon and dragged the Hebrews into captivity. The opera begins with the Babylonians surrounding Jerusalem. Early on we learn that Nabucco's youngest daughter fell in love with a Hebrew general when he was an ambassador to Babylon. She is being held hostage (or is she?). Her older sister is in love with the same Hebrew and not happy. She leads a group of soldiers disguised as Hebrews to rescue her sister and stop any dating going on. Pop shows up and finds out his little girl is dating one of them and destroys the temple. In act 2 the younger sister hangs out with the Hebrew slaves and her lover boy and decides to convert. Meanwhile the p.o.ed older sister finds out she was actually a captured Hebrew baby so of course she becomes a devotee of B'aal and an enemy of the Hebrews (hell hath no fury yadda yadda yadda). Meanwhile Nabucco decides that he is actually God. As he announces it Jehovah says not so fast bucko and zaps in the noggin with a lighting bolt. This throws him into a King Lear routine for most of Act 3. The older sister takes advantage of this and takes control and orders the Hebrews killed. By Act 4 Nabucco comes around and decides that he doesn't want a second lighting bolt so he stops his daughters plans and announces that he to is converting and becoming a Hebrew (as does his older daughter). Most historians have apparently missed this tid bit that Nebuchadnezzar became a Hebrew. Perhaps because it is about as likely as Saddam Hussein turning up in Boca Raton wearing Bermuda shorts and playinf shuffle board. Nabucco was one of Verdi's earliest operas and was first performed in 1842 when northern Italy was under the control of Austria. The Italian public took the story of enemy invasion and persecution as a metaphor for their condition. The audiences were so agitated by the opera that Austrian officers in Milan were attacked, and some killed, on opening night. There is a great piece for a massed chorus, Va Pensiero, sull'ali dorate that became the unofficial anthem for the Italian reunification movement and is still an unofficial anthem, sort of like God Bless America

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