American soprano Susan Dunn (above) made her Opera Australia debut in 1988 as Desdemona in Verdi’s OTELLO. Here she is heard in the Willow Song and Ave Maria from Act IV. Mezzo-soprano Heather Begg sings Emilia, and the conductor is Carlo Felice Cillario.
Listen here.
Beverly Sills sings the Willow Song from Douglas Moore’s BALLAD OF BABY DOE. The lyrics are so meaningful to me at this point in time.
“Willow, where we met together…Willow, when our love was new…Willow, if he once should be returning pray tell him I am weeping too.
So far from each other as the days pass in their emptiness away…O my love, must it be forever…never once again to meet as on that day…and never rediscover a way of telling all our hearts could say.
Gone are the days of pleasure….gone are the friends I had of yore…only the recollection fatal of a word that was spoken: Nevermore…
Willow, where we met together…Willow, when our love was new…Willow, if he once should be returning pray tell him I am weeping too…”
The grave of Baby Doe and Horace Tabor, Mount Olivet Cemetery, Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
Oberon's Glade 