Some music for the pandemic
Va, pensiero from Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi This recording of Va, pensiero , also known as The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves , from Verdi's opera Nabucco was made as a tribute to Italy's medical workers and others fighting Covid-19 in that country. The Wikipedia article on the aria , which includes the Italian lyrics with an English translation, notes Verdi composed Nabucco at a difficult moment in his life. His wife and small children had all just died of various illnesses. Despite a purported vow to abstain from opera-writing, he had contracted with La Scala to write another opera and the director, Bartolomeo Merelli, forced the libretto into his hands . There is a touching image at 4:40 of a medic cradling Italy as a new-born child. I first became familiar with this beautiful chorus back in the 1950s when it was regularly played on Hospitals Requests on Wednesdays at lunch time on Radio Éireann, Ireland's state-owned national radio