Va', pensiero*

As part of the annual Belcanto Festival at the Parco della Musica there was a noon hour concert today featuring the Chorus of Ste Cecilia and Banda Musicale dell'Arma dei Carabinieri (The Band of the Carabinieri)in arrangements of operatic music.

The programme ended with Verdi's great chorus of homesick longing: Va, pensiero. I was able to capture it in not very good sound or picture on my trusty Canon.

Fly, thought, on wings of gold;
go settle upon the slopes and the hills,
where, soft and mild, the sweet airs
of our native land smell fragrant!

It was a great moment in a fine concert and as with any performance of what is Italy's unofficial national anthem the audience was moved. It was doubly moving in that the performance was dedicated to the memory of the six Italian soldiers killed this week in Afghanistan.

The performance had begun with a minute of silence and a playing of the Last Post. It made me think of the two soldiers we lost this past week; a total now of 132 have died in the "peace keeping" mission our government sent them on. Sadly that same government cannot even put one flag in our capital at half-mast when the bodies are brought home. I am deeply ashamed of our politicians to whom these men and women are merely pawns and whose deaths can be dismissed with a few mouthed platitudes.

20 settembre - Sant'Andrea Kim Taegon e i Santi martiri corean