Roxolana Roslak sings “Il tramonto“ (1974)

The soprano performs Respighi’s lyric poem based on the Shelley text “The Sunset“. She is joined by the Orford String Quartet (Andrew Dawes, violin; Kenneth Perkins, violin; Terence Helmer, viola; and Marcel St-Cyr, cello). Taken from a concert in 1974. There late was One within whose subtle being, As light and wind within some delicate cloud That fades amid the blue noon’s burning sky, Genius and death contended. None may know The sweetness of the joy which made his breath Fail, like the trances of the summer air, When, with the lady of his love, who then First knew the unreserve of mingled being, He walked along the pathway of a field Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o’er, But to the west was open to the sky. There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points Of the far level grass and nodding flowers And the old dandelion’s hoary beard, And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay