According to "Jenna," an Astrologer whom I have somehow acquired,

My Guardian Sylph (whose existence I have suspected for a long time, and of which existence I have lately had incontrovertible proof, as I shall soon relate) is actually a Guardian Angel, Archangel even: none other than that Confidant of God and Adam, Raphael. I think Jenna means to flatter me, and to get me to pay for a "fully interpreted" ($150) birth chart, by making me the chief distinguish'd care of so important a semi-divinity--little realising that I care not squat, neither for "God," nor for any of His angels, nor for "importance." But--of immense significance and excitement to me--about a month ago, my Guardian Sylph made his shadowy but unmistakable presence felt in my life: At a dead, black moment of night, about two in the morning, I rose from my bed I knew not why, made tea, and turned on ¡Tunes Radio: Gardiner's version of Handel's first great operatic success, Agrippina, was being broadcast--as it were, just for me. I made haste to summon the ¡excellent! libretto and score out of the ether(net), and sat entranced, drinking tea, and revisiting the Venice of the year 1709 for two glorious hours, until the very darkest darkness presaged the dawn. I defy any astrologer to cite a more apposite instance of the immanence of transcendent guardianship. At least I think that's what I defy any astrologer to do.

In any case, guided by the same sure but invisible semi-divinity, I was led a couple of weeks ago to pay my fourteen dollar fine at the Hawaii State Library, and was virtually dragged upstairs to the Fine Arts Department, where books--as many as I could carry--on the subjects of Handel and Vivaldi and their music--leapt off the shelves into my arms....I am pregnant now with much reading. Well, let the first breaking of my mental uterine water be the video I found on YouTube of Cecilia Bartoli standing at the foot of Igor Stravinsky's grave in Venice, while some Englishman says to her, "He was very disparaging of Vivaldi, and said that he wrote the same concerto 500 times over." A complex emotion passes over the incomparable diva's features as she hears these words--part disdainful rictus, part pity, part anger, part desolate contempt--and she says with laconic decorum, "Why then is he here?" And you realise that there are some debts that death does not pay.

As I was saying, I'm reading among several books on the subject of Vivaldi/Handel. [I should mention that, long ago, when I was nineteen and living in France, one of the books that I bought and thoroughly read was Marc Pincherle's 1948 monograph on Vivaldi--which in 1961/62 was as much as anybody knew about Vivaldi. That is further proof, I think, that the same Sylphs have been guarding and guiding me for most of my life.] But as I was saying, I'm reading now among several books; some published as recently as four or five years ago, and one--Paul Henry Lang's George Frederick Handel, perhaps the most scholarly of them all--dating as far back as 1966. And what I am noticing is: The older the book, the more inveterate and breezily unconscious the habitude of casual anachronistic disparagement. Thus Lang permits himself to say of the young Domenico Scarlatti, "He was a successful composer of not particularly accomplished operas." Woo. Oh really. What utter, complacent horse shit. It makes me want to dig Herr Lang up (I assume he must be dead by now) and slap him. I haven't heard any of young Domenico's operas--and I seriously doubt that Lang had either--but I have heard several of his orchestral sinfonie and concerti written at about the same time; and I think the word for them is "perfectly delightful."

Dal Palazzo Barbaro: Anders Zorn, a heterosexual John Singer Sargent

Magna Grecia Abîmée dans le Gravier -- J.C. Bach's 'Temistocle' mounted at the Leipzig Oper by Les Talents Lyriques de Toulouse

Yet another sublime baroque (or early classical) opera--perfectly played, sung and acted--strangled in its cradle, made unlistenable, by the arrogant and heartless ignorance and presumption of its set designers (with the evident connivance of the director--and what does that tell us?)....

I wasn't able to find the score online, and read along with it, like I like to do; but, miraculously, I was able to find still photographs of the very production I was listening to--and I post them here because they show, plain as day, why, after a few minutes, I stopped listening at more than half volume to this incredibly significant, historically important, and intrinsically wonderfully beautiful opera. To quote from a review, dated the 24th of June 2005, signed (I think) by one Mehdi Mahdavi, in Altamusica, L'actualité de la musique classique:

"...la Perse japonisante [Bushido, don't you know--as like the patriotic honor of a Greek general as never mind...Oh, never mind] de Rifail Ajdarpasic et Ariane Isabell Unfried s'encombre malheureusement de détails superflus, d'autant que le gravier entournant le pavillon tournant de Serse ne cesse de crisser sous les pas et sous les roues, souvent au détriment de la musique...." Make that "incessament au détriment de la musique." Every goddamned note was swallowed in a susurrus of staticky gravel-noises. What it was like, acoustically speaking, was listening to an a.m. radio broadcast, in the bad old days before f.m., on the edge of transmission-range during an Aurora Borealis display. Lovely French word crisser; it means, just like it says in my online Larousse French dictionary, émettre un bruit grinçant, aigu et continu, plus ou moins fort et souvent désagréable. Exactly.