Moving people

Michael Andrews sings the Tears for Fears classic Mad World in a wonderful acoustic version. I believe he recorded it for a feature film, but I can't remember which one. It was constantly on the radio those two months I had to drive an hour to school and another hour to get back home. Hearing it on the radio was the highpoint of the day. Today I discovered the video by Michael Gondry is quite beautiful as well.

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(Thanks to Wooster Collective for the link.)

A great voice has ceased singing.

When I read in the newspaper yesterday that soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf had died at the age of 90, I remembered her name. She is one of the stars from the excellent recording of Mozart's Don Giovanni I have. What she could do with her voice is amazing. Listen to her rendition of Donna Elvira:

Recitative and aria Il quali eccessi, o Numi (Act II, scene 14)

and the rest of that aria (and scene 14)

Mi tradì quell'alma ingrata

(Both files are .m4a, and uploaded to YouSendIt, so available for 7 days or 25 first downloads.)

The Italian libretto of this aria can be found here. An English translation of the lyrics is available on this webpage.