In a message dated 5/5/2009 6:33:52 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, palma@xxxxxxxx writes: why on earth speranza, this jumble fo the title in italian of a french book? --- why on heaven, you ask. To honour you and your culture: Italia. I recently learned there is an opera (my current passion) thus called: I learned about it in one of my favourite opera reference books: the Arnoldo Mondatori (Milano) "Repertorio della lirica dal 1597". It's so excellent the operas are ONLY catalogued chronologically. So this one is: opera in one act by the GENIAL Luigi Dellapiccola (nato 1905 -- morto 1975). Libretto by Dellapiccola, based on Saint-Exupery. Prima: Teatro della Pergola (no less) Firenze, 18 maggio 1940. CAST: FRANCESCO VALENTINO ANTONIO MELANDRI Pauli, Baldii VINCENZO GUICCARDI. Conductor: Fernando Previtali The action takes place in Buenos Aires, around 1930. "This was the first time dodecaphonic music was used in Italian opera" ---- In 1929, Saint Exupéry moved to South America, where he was appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina Company.,In "Vol de Nuit", the pilot is lost (on the Patagonian plain) while flying through a storm: "We don't ask to be eternal. What we ask is not to see acts and objects abruptly lose their meaning. The void surrounding us then suddenly yawns on every side." Saint-Exupéry was little known before this out of the literary environment (though André Gide supported him and wrote the foreword to the first edition), and as a result his name was made. Later, he experienced visual and auditory hallucinations. The fable The Little Prince begins with a pilot being marooned in the desert. On the evening of 31 July 1944, he left from an airbase on Corsica, and was never seen again. A woman reported having watched a plane crash around noon of August the first near the Bay of Carqueiranne off Toulon. An unidentifiable body wearing French colors was found several days later and buried in Carqueiranne that September. While "The Little Prince" _was_ made into an opera, I find it slightly feminine for my taste (but pretty); and thought that by titling "Volo di Notte" this, I might confuse Geary or Palma. And don't you agree that 'invisible pour les yeux' _is_ 'tautological'? Play with the expression till it loses all meaning. Cheers, JLS Buenos Aires, Argentina **************Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html