Still embarrassing after all these years....

Listening to this morning's opera offering on ¡Tunes radio: The Neapolitan version (not the Parisian) of Mosè in Egitto. Two centuries on, and it still has the power--even while it ravisheth and delighteth--of flabbergasting. A love interest in the story of Moses?! Not that I at all care, even a rusty rat's patootie, but I have an uncomfortable sense that all this vocal, musical and scenic splendor is presented absolutely dead-pan--nobody is supposed to be laughing his butt off. Funny how this my lurking sensibilità luterana works: I'd be perfectly content with a deliberately circus clown version--en travesti would be best of all--that I'd never stop laughing at...even

while I were swooning at the wonderful beauty of the singing. But to sit here taking all this blasphemous absurdity seriously is almost more than mortal flesh can bear....

And this, I would just like to point out, is approximately what Martin Luther meant when he arrived in Rome and saw that the sale of indulgences was paying for the Renaissance, and said, "This is wrong!" And, then as now, Italians, conscious of the innocence of their intentions, but suddenly unsure of themselves in the face of this intransigeant Protestant disapproval, would answer, "But why is it wrong? After all, whom does it hurt?"