Voi che udite

Voi che udite il mio lamento
Agrippina / Act 2, Scene 5
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Nathalie Stutzmann
Orfeo 55

Ottone:
Voi che udite il mio lamento
compatite il mio dolor.

Perdo un trono, e pur lo sprezzo;
ma quel ben che tanto apprezzo,
ahi che perderlo è tormento
che disanima il mio cor.

You who hear my lament,
have pity on my grief.

I am losing a throne, yet I despise it;
but the jewel I value so highly,
alas, her loss so torments me
that my heart is crushed.
[English translation by Avril Bardoni]

At the heart of the opera, midway through Act Two, Ottone reacts to being suddenly outcast from his lover Poppea and all his former allies in the powerful lament Voi che udite il mio lamento. The role was composed for the contralto Francesca Vanini-Boschi, who was married to the bass Giuseppe Boschi (who sang in all of Handel’s London Royal Academy operas during the 1720s).

From the CD Handel: Heroes from the Shadows:

Art in the video
[0:30] Lionel Royer (1852–1926)
[1:00] Circle of Jean-Germain Drouais (1763-1788)
[1:12] Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Desmarais (1756-1813)
[1:35] Nicolas-Guy Brenet (1728-1792)
[2:12] Félix Boisselier (1776-1811)
[2:42] Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680)
[3:08] Jean Germain Drouais (1763-1788)
[3:25] Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880)
[3:42] Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912)
[4:05] Arthur Georg von Ramberg (1819–1875)
[4:28] The Spanish School, 19th.century
[4:35] Antonio Zanchi (c. 1660-1665)