Sarah Brightman - Lascia ch'io pianga

Lascia ch'io pianga la dura sorte,
E che sospiri la libertà!
E che sospiri, e che sospiri la libertà!
Lascia ch'io pianga la dura sorte,
E che sospiri la libertà!

Lascia ch'io pianga la dura sorte,
E che sospiri la libertà!
E che sospiri, e che sospiri la libertà!
Lascia ch'io pianga la dura sorte,
E che sospiri la libertà!

Music and lyrics: G.F. Händel, adapted by Peterson
(The song is originally from Händel's Rinaldo.)

From: Eden (1998).
And from: Classics (2001) as well as Classics - European release (2006) and on Amalfi: Sarah Brightman love songs (2010).

Source of the lyrics: the CD-booklet;
the booklet gives the stanza only once. In that, it writes "Lascia ch'io pianga mia cruda sorte", but this is incorrect: it should be la dura; see at this page under 'Handel' (thanks to Carlos Pineda and Tezcan Mert-Cakal).

Niki Beelen, however, wrote that in the original text of Händel it does actually say mia cruda.

 
Many thanks goes to Christine, who helped me get a better translation than the one I had here before.
The original text in literal translation reads:
Let which me cry, the cruel fate.
And which sigh [or: long for], the liberty.
There is, I think, a difference in meaning between the English words "liberty" and "freedom", a difference which is difficult to express, and it depends on the context which of the two is the best translation. I feel that in this case "freedom" would be better, but I do not know the background of the song.
In readable form the translation would thus be something like this:

Let me weep

Let me weep over my cruel fate,
And that I long for freedom!
And that I long, and that I long for freedom!
Let me weep over my cruel fate,
And that I long for freedom!

Let me weep over my cruel fate,
And that I long for freedom!
And that I long, and that I long for freedom!
Let me weep over my cruel fate,
And that I long for freedom!

 
The song is also sung by Charlotte Church on her second album Charlotte Church (1999). The booklet of that CD gives only the unique lines of the lyrics (again showing mia cruda instead of la dura):

Lascia ch'io pianga mia cruda sorte,
E che sospiri la libertà.

Il duolo infranga queste ritorte
De' miei martiri sol per pietà.

In the third line "in franga" is two words in the booklet, but the arias database gives it as one word: "infranga", which is the correct Italian, Paolo wrote me, adding also that "De" in the second line requires an apostrophe (missing in the CD-booklet), as it stands for "Dei"

These lines tranalated in English (with thanks to Jim Waters, Mariella Caesar, Ellen Denham and Paolo):

Let me weep over my cruel fate,
And sigh for my lost freedom!

May the pain shatter the chains
of my torments just out of mercy.

 
Charlotte actually sings the lines more often, resulting in the lyrics as above given for Sarah's version, except that:
1) that Charlotte really sings "mia" in "Lascia ch'io pianga mia cruda sorte", not "la" as Sarah seems to do (see the remark on this above), and
2) that Charlotte sings three lines between the stanzas of Sarah's version:

Il duolo infranga queste ritorte
De' miei martiri sol per pietà.
De' miei martiri sol per pietà.

 
For the English [free] version on the score see this page (thanks to Paolo for this link).

 
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last modified: 30 September 2010