Che volo d'augelli

English Libretto or Translation:

NEDDA
thoughtfully
What fire there was in his look!
I lowered my eyes
for fear he should read
my secret thoughts.
Oh! if he caught me …
He's so brutal …
But enough: no more.
These are idle, fearful dreams!
O how glorious is the August sun!
I feel full of life, and, my senses glowing
with secret desire, I know not what I long for!
gazing at the sky
Oh what a flight of birds,
and what a chatter!
What do they seek? Where are they going?
Who knows? …
My mother, who could tell fortunes,
understood their warbling,
and sang this song to me as a child:
Hey!
The birds chirp up aloft,
freely launched in flight like arrows.
They defy the clouds and the burning sun
and onward they fly
through the boundless sky.
Let them roam through the atmosphere,
ever eager for the glorious infinite blue:
They too follow a dream,
a chimera, as onward they fly
Through the gilded clouds.
Though the wind freshen
and the tempest roar,
with pinions spread they brave all dangers;
rain or lightning, nothing defers them,
and onward they fly
over abysses and oceans.
Onward they go to some strange land
of which perhaps they dream
and which they seek in vain.
But the gipsies of the sky
follow the mysterious power
which draws them …
onward … ever onward!