Mussorgsky, Serenada (from Songs and Dances of Death)

Sava Vemić, bass
Giuseppe Mentuccia, piano

The Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program
April 28, 2017 Recital
The Bruno Walter Auditorium | The New York Public Library of Performing Arts

Serenada
(poem by A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov translated by Sava Vemić)

A magical bliss, blue night,
trembling twilight of spring.
With her head dropped, the ill girl is absorbing
The whisper of the night’s silence.
Sleep doesn’t close her shining eyes,
life to pleasure calls,
and under the window in the silence of midnight,
Death its serenade sings:

“In the dark of captivity, stern and stiff
Your youth withers;
I, knight-errant, by wondrous power
will free you.
Arise, look at yourself:
Your beautiful visage transparently shines,
Cheeks rosy, with wavy hair
Your figure is as with a cloud entwined.
Blue shining your staring eyes,
Is brighter then heaven and flame;
Like midday heat wafts your breath…
You have seduced me.
Your hearing is captivated by my serenade,
The knight is called by your whisper,
The knight has come for the final reward:
The moment of rapture has arrived.
Your tender figure, intoxicating trembling…
Oh I will smother you
In my strong embrace: to my love’s murmuring
Listen!…Hush!…You are mine!”

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