LA QUIET DOPO LA TEMPESTA

(The Calm After the Storm)

(Giacomo Leopardi)

Christin Owens

Soprano

Stephen Taylor

Piano

La Quiete Dopo la Tempesta

La Quiete Dopo la Tempesta (The Calm After the Storm) is a setting

of a poem by the 19th Century Italian poet, Giacomo Leopardi. Each

of the three stanzas of the poem is set as a separate song. Leopardi

was a pessimistic thinker. This poem expresses his belief that joy is

the absence of pain, and the ultimate joy, therefore, is death. The

tesxt of the first song, Passata e la Tempesta (Gone is the Storm),

is light and gleeful as a storm has passed and the town’s people return

to work and play. The second song, Si Rallegra Ogni Core (Every

Heart is Happy), expresses Leopardi’s belief that joy is born of pain,

and our natural disposition is one of fear and suffering. In the third song,

O Natura Cortese (O Gracious Nature), we learn that happiness only

comes from a momentary lack of fear or suffering.  The calm after the

storm is temporary and deludes us since it is preferable to the storm itself.

The only real relief from the strife of life comes from death.

The composition of this song cycle began as an exercise in setting an

Italian text as a preparation for writing an Italian opera. The rhythms

and imagery of Leopardi’s language inspired a somewhat traditional

Italian melodic and harmonic approach in these songs.

Every heart is happy.

When is life as sweet, as welcome

As it is now?

When with so much love

Does a man bend to his studies?

Or tend to his work?

Start something new?

When is he less aware of his troubles?

Joy is born of pain;

Vain joy, it is the fruit

Of past fear, and makes even one

Who loathed his life,

Tremble and fear death

Thus in long-drawn torment,

Cold, quiet, pale,

The people sweat and tremble, seeing

Moving in to threaten them

Lightening, clouds, and wind.

THE CALM AFTER THE STORM 

by Giacomo Leopardi

Gone is the storm:

I can hear the birds again, and the hen

Returning to the road,

Repeating her song. Look how the blue sky

Breaks through in the west, over the mountain;

Clearing the countryside,

In the valley the river reappears.

Every heart is happy, everywhere

One hears the sound of the people

Returning to work.

The craftsman gazes at the humid sky,

With his work in hand, singing,

On his doorstep; out runs

A woman to fill her bucket

With fresh rain water;

The huckster renews

From street to street

His daily cry.

Look the sun is out, look it’s smiling

On the hills and homes. Balconies are being opened,

Terraces and porches are being opened by families:

And from the highway, you can hear in the distance

The sound of harness bells: as the squeaky traveler’s carriage

Resumes its journey.

O gracious nature,

These are your gifts,

These are the delights

You give to mortals. To be free from pain

Is our pleasure.

You scatter sorrow with a free hand, grief

Spontaneously appears, and the happiness, that so often

Through a freak of nature and some miracle

Grows out of trouble, is a great reward. Humanity

Dear to the gods! Happy to find

Some breathing room

From sorrow: is blessed

When all sorrows are finally relieved by death.

Translation by John B. Valerio

I. Passata e la tempesta

II. Si rallegra ogni core

III. O natura cortese