| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: That from your eyes the sight of God conceal."
As a wild flock of pigeons, to their food
Collected, blade or tares, without their pride
Accustom'd, and in still and quiet sort,
If aught alarm them, suddenly desert
Their meal, assail'd by more important care;
So I that new-come troop beheld, the song
Deserting, hasten to the mountain's side,
As one who goes yet where he tends knows not.
Nor with less hurried step did we depart.
CANTO III
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: wheel, and go forward till you come to farmer Murrain's barn. Coming
to the farmer's barn, you are to turn to the right, and then to the
left, and then to the right about again, till you find out the old
mill--
MARLOW. Zounds, man! we could as soon find out the longitude!
HASTINGS. What's to be done, Marlow?
MARLOW. This house promises but a poor reception; though perhaps the
landlord can accommodate us.
LANDLORD. Alack, master, we have but one spare bed in the whole
house.
TONY. And to my knowledge, that's taken up by three lodgers already.
She Stoops to Conquer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: of the life of nations from the loftiest point of view. My opera, for
which I myself wrote the /libretto/, for a poet would never have fully
developed the subject, is the life of Mahomet,--a figure in whom the
magic of Sabaeanism combined with the Oriental poetry of the Hebrew
Scriptures to result in one of the greatest human epics, the Arab
dominion. Mahomet certainly derived from the Hebrews the idea of a
despotic government, and from the religion of the shepherd tribes or
Sabaeans the spirit of expansion which created the splendid empire of
the Khalifs. His destiny was stamped on him in his birth, for his
father was a heathen and his mother a Jewess. Ah! my dear Count to be
a great musician a man must be very learned. Without knowledge he can
Gambara |
