Handel for Saturday

We are getting closer and closer to Christmas, so I thought this blog needed a bit more Christmas music. I thought a piece from The Messiah was in order. I could have uploaded a Christmas carol, but I really wanted some Handel tonight, something that is not exclusively Christmas related (I listen to it during Easter just as much, maybe more) yet fits the season and the wait. There will be Christmas carols in the upcoming days. Tonight it is For Unto Us a Child is Born. I think I found a good enough version on YouTube. I hope you enjoy.

An aria for this melancholic day

Well, we have today a rainy, even stormy day, the first storm of the spring, with lightning and all. I find it better than late snow. I was wondering what music to put on this blog for such circumstances. I don't want to put Vivaldi's spring here, that would be too obvious. Easter is coming soon and I guess something out of Mozart's requiem could be fine for a gloomy weather, but I put on this blog my share of sacred music in the past. Then I thought: why not some Handel? Two days ago, it was the anniversary of his Messiah, which would certainly suits the coming Easter (at least as much as it does Christmas, the holidays which it is usually associated with), but I want something profane. So I am putting here the aria from his opera Rinaldo, Laschia ch'io pianga, maybe its most famous aria.

I have first heard the aria in a scene(which you can see here on Youtube) from the movie Farinelli, a musical melodrama based on the life of the castrato. A very good scene from a not quite great but underrated movie. But maybe I am easily impressed when it comes to opera. Nothing beats Amadeus, however Farinelli was quite watchable. I loved the aria then, I love it even more now that I can understand it. It has a beautiful melancholic feel to it, perfect for gloomy days. It is here interpreted by Danielle de Niese, who I think sings Handel beautifully: