Tuesday Tones

If the picture above doesn’t make our new post-series theme clear, we’re talking about Moon Music! Or, classical music inspired by the moon. Why did I land on this particular theme? Well…why not! I did a search for some pieces in this vein, and there’s some really nifty stuff out there, much of which I haven’t heard. So I’m kind of excited by this.

We’re going to start out with an aria by Antonin Dvorak. This, the “Song to the Moon”, is from his opera Rusalka, about a water spirit who falls in love with a mortal man. Obviously this love-match is not destined for an easy time of it. In Act I, Rusalka (our titular spirit) sees the Moon above and sings this aria to it, pleading the Moon to give the mortal man dreams of her. The music is sad and sensuous and deeply lyrical…and now I want to track down the entire opera and hear it. Dvorak’s operas have tended to languish in obscurity, mainly because their librettos are in the composer’s native Czech language, which most singers do not study.

Here is the “Song to the Moon” from Rusalka, act I, by Antonin Dvorak.