Aretusa (1911), poem by Shelley orchestrated by Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) with a mezzo-soprano as singer.
Janet Baker, mezzosoprano
The City of London Sinfonia directed by Richard Hickox.
Description by “Blue” Gene Tyranny (Allmusic.com)
Composed in the summer of 1910, during one week’s attentive inspiration, this piece, a dramatic ballad for soprano and orchestra, is the first of three settings of poems by Shelley. The opening in scherzo-like, flowing triplet rhythms describes the arising of the water nymph Arethusa from the snows of the Acroceraunian mountains, leaping down the rocks in streams, singing, gliding and springing about the earth. She is pursued by the river god Alpheus with earthquake and thunder, but she manages to escape by flowing into the Ocean – ” The loud Ocean heard, to its blue depth stirred, and divided at her prayer … Alpheus rushed behind, as an eagle pursuing, a dove to its ruin, down the streams of the cloudy wind. ” Aretusa travels with Ocean to the Enna mountains, the source of water for the Fontana di Trevi (one of the fountains in the composer’s famed Pines and Fountains of Rome) – “Like friends once parted, grown single-hearted, they ply their watery tasks … in the rocking deep, beneath the Ortygian shore; Like spirits that lie in the azure sky, when they love but live no more. ” This beautiful composition is impressionist in texture, but shows more of the influence of Wagner and late Mahler, in its mixture of chromaticism and modality, than that of the French school.
Original audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocjIqHiDRJg
Score: https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Respighi,_Ottorino
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I DO NOT own the AUDIO neither the SCORE. I don’t earn anything by doing this video and it has been done only for didactical purposes. Copyrights go to all the artists.