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.