NABUCCO

"And after such an evening they both were very still, having known the immensity of passion.  They felt small, half afraid, childish, and wondering, like Adam and Eve when they lost their innocence and realized the magnificence of the power which drove them out of Paradise and across the great night and the great day of humanity.  It was for each of them an initiation and a satisfaction.  To know their own nothingness, to know the tremendous living flood which carried them always, gave them rest within themselves.  If so great a magnificent power could overwhelm them, identify them altogether with itself, so that they knew they were only grains in the tremendous heave that lifted every grass-blade its little height, and every tree, and living thing, then why fret about themselves? They could let themselves be carried by life, and they felt a sort of peace each in the other. There was a verification which they had had together.  Nothing could nullify it, nothing could take it away; it was almost their belief in life"--Sons and Lovers

This afternoon I saw the Met production of Verdi's Nabucco at the Yonge & Eglinton, with the great Placido Domingo in the title role.  That's the one where Nabucco captures Jerusalem but his daughter falls in love with a Judean and converts, but his other daughter schemes to take over when he goes out of his head... The Slaves' Chorus was so well-received that they did it a second time! (I saw that happen with "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat" at the National Theatre production of Guys and Dolls in London twenty years ago.)

I've just been rereading The First Four Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder's unfinished addition to her Little House series, describing her newlywed life.  It's only half as long as the other books:  I have a feeling that she gave up on it because it brought back too many painful memories. Three of their first four crops were lost--including a $3000 bumper crop wrecked in a hailstorm--her husband suffered paralysis from a combination of diphtheria and overwork, she lost their second child shortly after his birth, and their house burnt down.  The good old days...

The Crown keeps getting even better! (They've now got to the part in the mid-1950s when my parents were in England.) As the Queen, Claire Foy's polite poker face reminds me of a geisha.