Semiramis of Babylon

The Internet radio just played a "pot-boiler" of an overture to the Rossini opera Semiramide.  Its a toe tapper if you have that set of toes.

I saw the opera once and read the libretto (story/script) and it is roughly a weird version of a soap opera with mistaken identities, mysterious blackouts, gnashing and wailing and mom marries son.  Perfect.  Made for TV.

From years back and Dante's Second Circle of Hell, I remember Semiramis being mentioned only because we had books then for research and I was supposed to look that "legend" up but didn't and got called on in class and hadn't and my personal circle of hell ensued.

Semiramis contemplating
 the corpse

And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays,
Making in air a long line of themselves,
So saw I coming, uttering lamentations,
Shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress.

Whereupon said I: "Master, who are those People, whom the black air so castigates?"
"The first of those, of whom intelligence Thou fain wouldst have", then said he unto me,
"The empress was of many languages. To sensual vices she was so abandoned,
That lustful she made licit in her law,

To remove the blame to which she had been led.
She is Semiramis. . .
She succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse;
She held the land which now the Sultan rules

Voltaire wrote a play called Semiramus but I never read it. My only Voltaire was a play I went to in high school and it was in French, therefore lost to me for the most part.  I have a lot of run-ins with Candide but mostly through the Bernstein opera. 

Anyway, enough.  Let's get on to the music...have a nice day.  Tap those toes.