Beatrice's Song

from The Cenci (Shelley) (E)

Goldschmidt’s second opera Beatrice Cenci was one of four prize-winning works in the British Arts Council’s ‘Festival of Britain’ competition in 1949, but it never received the promised performance and had to wait nearly forty years for its triumphant premiere in a concert performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1988. Consciously written in a modern ‘bel canto’ idiom, it is a more opulent and romantic work than its predecessor Der gewaltige Hahnrei and contains some of Goldschmidt’s most passionate and eloquent music. This haunting aria is taken from the third act of the opera, sung as Beatrice awaits execution in her prison cell for the murder of her brutal father.