Sunday music spot: Finale to Act 1 of "The Barber of Seville"

This is the conclusion to Act one of Rossini's opera "The Barber of Seville"

Just before this sequence it has been revealed who the main protagonists in the play actually are. There is another round of revelations left for the next play in Pierre Beaumarchais' Figaro trilogy, "The Marriage of Figaro," but the characters have just heard quite enough to leave them reeling in shock and questioning their sanity.

The lyrics of the chorus which ends the act, often performed while dashing round the stage as though in the grip of complete hysteria, can be translated into English as follows:

"My head seems to be in a fiery smithy,
the sound of the anvils, ceaseless and growing. deafens the ear.
Up and down, high and low, striking heavily,
the hammer makes the very walls resound with a barbarous harmony.
Thus our poor, bewildered brain, stunned, confounded, in confusion, without reason, is reduced to insanity." 



Seemed rather appropriate music for a blog about British politics at the end of the week we've just had, don't you think?

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