Four more pages of orchestration of Op. 54 Israel in Trouble: I. If It Is Thus, Let Me Die (somehow Rachel makes it through the birth of Esau and Jacob, in rhythmic permutations and second substitutions), completing the movement, for a total of seven,
after which Harriet and I watch Elizabeth I, part two, which deals not only with the Virgin Queen, fair Oriana (Thomas Weelkes's As Vesta Was Descending), but also Robert Devereux
(of Gaetano Donizetti operatic fame), Second Earl of Essex
(as in John Dowland's Lacrymae:The Earl of Essex - His Galliard).
While future King James I (of Biblical Version and Shakespeare patron fame) doesn't come across particularly sympathetically, much of his characterization (including his apparent early preference for men -- notwithstanding his eventual fathering of three, and later heterosexual extramarital affairs) and looks are bang on, as true of the other principals therein. The backstory of J, as well as his father and mother (Mary Queen of Scots), are as unbelievable-believable as is so often the case in life (somehow the leper King Baldwin IVof Crusader Palestine also comes to mind). And to think some of us are just happy for an energetic-quiet evening at home... Gotta call it quits for now -- have to get up early and reproduce more Antigone scores, probably not at Kinko's....
