Do you like Shakespeare? I do, a lot, since I first read Hamlet many years ago. I admit that, leaving aside that four centuries separate us, I would smack some character's nape, but the way he plays with words compensates for everything. Shakespeare was mainly a theatre man so his success in Opera is just natural; as it is that we don't usually find his verses in songs. Most songs, in fact, are included in plays, such as Desdemona's willow song in Othello or Clown's songs in Twelfth Night. In fact, we listened to Clown on the first post this year. Today we'll listen to a Shakespeare's song too and, according to my notebook, some more are coming the next months. The reason? As you probably know, this 2016 commemorates 400 years since William Shakespeare’s death; I don't think he needs to be rediscovered but it's always a pleasure to read him and to celebrate his words.

 

"Love, that moves the sun and the other stars."
I read this sentence somewhere when I was at school and I jotted it down in my notebook (yes, back then I already wrote in notebooks). Later, I found out that it was the last verse of Dante's Divine Comedy and it spoke about transcendent love. Still, damage was already done and the quote was engraved in that teenager's memory without further reflection, only for its beauty. Love moves the sun and the other stars and moves also poets to write verses (sometimes) so unforgettable as those of Dante; many of these poems became songs so it was just very easy to choose that word, love, to start a new series of songs.

 

When you’ve seen this title with five figures, you’ve probably guessed we’re celebrating our anniversary, right? Yes, this blog just turned four years! I'm really happy, four years on the network is a long time. Thank you all, my dear readers! Thanks for reading and commenting, either here, by mail, on the social networking or just having a beer. Today we’ll review the year and some figures, also we will discuss some new features on this webpage, I'll talk about a new series and we'll listen to a pearl.

 

Before I started writing this post, I thought back over the lullabies we’ve already heard; I remember those of Brahms, Strauss, Schubert, Barber, Britten and Duparc. The first ones are as expected, a mother (a father in Schubert's song) rocks her child to sleep; Britten and Duparc's songs are adult songs, where a man watches over a sleeping woman; the cradle song we're listening today is also an adult one, Ruhe, Süßliebchen (Rest, my loved), the 9th song from Brahm's cycle Die schöne Magelone.