Classically Abby - November 10, 2020


When A Woman Loses Everything： The Truth In Opera ｜｜ Devastation. Revenge. THAT'S OPERA.

Hosted by
Abby Shapiro
Mentioned
Giulio Cesare Handel La Sorte Mía Cornelia Sesto
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Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

75.13

Word count

935

Sentence count

68

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I sing the aria "La Sorte Mía" from the opera "Giulio Cesare" written by George Frideric Handel. This aria is about Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, who has fallen in love with Julius Caesar, her brother, who is a tyrant and wants to take her place as Queen of Egypt. In this aria, we see how devastated she is by her fate, and how she decides to take revenge on her brother.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.080 Hello, Classic Crew, and welcome to today's video where I'm going to be singing an operatic aria that's got just about everything.
00:00:10.060 So today I'm singing the aria Piangero, La Sorte Mía from the opera Giulio Cesare, which is written by Handel.
00:00:17.500 And this aria is one of my absolute favorites, so I thought before I sang it for you guys,
00:00:23.060 I would give you a little bit of a rundown about what it's about and how you can relate to it,
00:00:27.960 because all of the emotions in opera are very real, they're just kind of experienced at the height of that emotion.
00:00:35.000 And so I wanted to share this aria with you guys because it is so beautiful, but it's also got some angry parts right in the middle.
00:00:42.320 So this aria is actually what's called a da capo aria, which means that it has an A section, a B section, and then the A repeats with changes.
00:00:51.040 So that means that there's a section at the beginning, and then there's a section in the middle that's different,
00:00:55.040 and then the first section repeats, but it has some ornaments, it sounds a little bit different,
00:01:00.800 and those ornaments actually give it more meaning.
00:01:03.280 And the story of this opera is about Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.
00:01:06.960 So I am Cleopatra in this aria, and the story is very complicated, so I'm not going to try and explain it top to bottom,
00:01:14.700 but I want to give you enough context just so that you understand why Cleopatra is feeling what she's feeling.
00:01:20.360 So basically, in the opera, Cleopatra has seduced Julius Caesar because she wants to get him on her side
00:01:28.140 so that she can get rid of her brother who she's been co-ruling with and take her rightful place as the queen of Egypt. 1.00
00:01:35.820 And so she has seduced him, but in the process, she's actually fallen in love with him.
00:01:41.380 She thinks at this moment that he is dead, and her brother, who she is trying to remove,
00:01:47.600 who she's trying to get rid of so that she can take his place, has taken her captive. 0.88
00:01:52.880 And her brother is a tyrant. He is just killing people left and right. 0.99
00:01:57.000 He wants to take advantage of women who don't want him. 0.99
00:02:00.400 He is a terrible man, and she doesn't want him sitting on the throne. 0.99
00:02:03.640 So he has taken her captive, and she's certain that he is going to kill her.
00:02:08.440 And Cornelia and Sesto, who are her allies, have also been taken captive, so they can't help her.
00:02:14.700 So in this aria, Cleopatra is singing about how her fate has been so cruel
00:02:20.340 and how she is crying and weeping over what is to come.
00:02:25.240 And then in the middle, she gets really upset and angry and vows to take revenge upon the tyrant,
00:02:34.180 her brother, and haunt him for the rest of her days.
00:02:37.240 Now, when you guys watch my rendition of this aria, you'll see I do have a sort of transition throughout.
00:02:43.460 So I start off upset and feeling devastated about what has come to pass.
00:02:48.020 And then I start to realize who brought this fate upon me.
00:02:51.760 And I want to take revenge upon Ptolemeo, that's her brother in the opera.
00:02:56.440 And then the anger of what she's going to do after her death, kind of the realization of all of that,
00:03:05.200 it starts to dissipate, and Cleopatra just becomes incredibly tired and accepts what's happening to her.
00:03:14.520 And so there is a definite transition throughout from sadness to anger to acceptance in a way, but devastation.
00:03:24.940 And one of the reasons I love this aria and I think it is relatable is because I like that she has both the feeling of devastation and sadness
00:03:33.240 mixed with anger because I think those two emotions are very close to one another.
00:03:37.920 And often we cover our anger with sadness.
00:03:41.480 And so her kind of realizing through the course of the aria that she's not just sad, that she's angry too,
00:03:47.880 and then that leads her to acceptance is something I think is really fascinating.
00:03:53.560 And as well, I just love the entirely human nature of the music itself as well as the text, right?
00:03:59.320 The music is reflecting her inner turmoil and her inner sadness as well as that anger.
00:04:04.480 And I think that Handel obviously is a master at this.
00:04:08.020 He is an incredible composer.
00:04:10.440 And I'm so excited to share this aria with you guys today.
00:04:14.220 So I hope you enjoy it.
00:04:16.680 Let me know in the comments if you've ever heard of Giulio Cesare, if you've ever heard of this aria,
00:04:21.560 or what you just think of the music, if it's something that you can understand and it appeals to you.
00:04:26.660 I'd love to hear.
00:04:27.840 And let's get into it.
00:04:29.000 Let's get into it.
00:04:59.000 Let's get into it.
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00:12:24.760 Let's get into it.
00:12:25.860 Bye.