"Ah! quel giorno ognor rammento"

from Semiramide

Gioachino Rossini

Michelle Mariposa, mezzo-soprano

Peter Pazstor, piano

Recorded live on 4 August 2023

Crosby Theater, Santa Fe Opera

Michelle Mariposa, mezzo-soprano

Chuck Foster, piano

Recorded live

Galvin Recital Hall

May 14, 2023

L'amour de Piroutcha

No. 5, from Harawi: Chant d'amour et de mort

Olivier Messiaen

(La Jeune Fille)

“Toungou, ahi, toungou,

toungou, berce, toi,

ma cendre des lumières,

berce ta petite en tes bras verts.

Piroutcha, ta petite cendre, pour toi.”

(Le Jeune Homme)

“Ton oeil tous les ciels, doundou tchil.

Coupe-moi la tête doundou tchil.

Nos souffles, nos souffles, bleu et or.

Ahi! Ahi!

Chaînes rouges, noires, mauves, amour, la mort.”

(The Young Girl)

“Toungou, ahi, toungou,

toungou, lull, you,

my ash of lights,

lull your small girl in your green arms.

Piroutcha, your own little ash, for you.”

(The Young Man)

“Your eye, all the heavens, doundou tchil.

Cut my head off, doundou tchil.

Our breaths, our breaths, blue and gold.

Ahi! Ahi!

Chains of red, black, mauve, love, death.”

Il tramonto

Ottorino Respighi

Original English text by Percy B. Shelley

Michelle Mariposa, mezzo-soprano

Ran Huo, violin

Marian Mayuga, violin

Facundo Ortega, viola

Ezra Escobar, cello

Il tramonto (The Sunset)

There late was One within whose subtle being,

As light and wind within some delicate cloud

That fades amid the blue noon’s burning sky,

Genius and death contended. None may know

The sweetness of the joy which made his breath

Fail, like the trances of the summer air,

When, with the Lady of his love, who then

First knew the unreserve of mingled being,

He walked along the pathway of a field

Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o’er,

But to the west was open to the sky.

There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold

Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points

Of the far level grass and nodding flowers

And the old dandelion’s hoary beard,

And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay

On the brown massy woods—and in the east

The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose

Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,

While the faint stars were gathering overhead—

‘Is it not strange, Isabel,’ said the youth,

‘I never saw the sun? We will walk here

To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.’

That night the youth and lady mingled lay

In love and sleep—but when the morning came

The lady found her lover dead and cold.

Let none believe that God in mercy gave

That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,

But year by year lived on—in truth I think

Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,

And that she did not die, but lived to tend

Her agèd father, were a kind of madness,

If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.

For but to see her were to read the tale

Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts

Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;—

Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:

Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,

Her lips and cheeks were like things dead—so pale;

Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins

And weak articulations might be seen

Day’s ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self

Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,

Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

‘Inheritor of more than earth can give,

Passionless calm and silence unreproved,

Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,

And are the uncomplaining things they seem,

Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;

Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were—Peace!’

This was the only moan she ever made.

"Da fspomnila... Padrugi miliya" (Polina's Aria)

From The Queen of Spades

Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky

Michelle Mariposa, mezzo-soprano

Paula Gelpi, piano

Recorded on August 29, 2023

Ganz Hall

Roosevelt University