One more piece from Mozart's opera Abduction from the Seraglio, which takes place a little bit after the one I posted last week:This is kind of an awkward piece for a variety of reasons. For one, the little mini-symphony at the beginning seems to have no purpose and interupts the flow of the drama. For another, the aria doesn't really have any kind of unifying theme, shifting moods and melodies from one to the next without developing them in full--indeed, you can hear foreshadowing of many different melodies that Mozart would turn into independent, complete compositions much later in his career, almost as if this aria was meant to be a kind of resume. But despite these global weaknesses of the piece, all of the disparate parts of this aria really are quite beautiful in their own right, so I'm posting this anyway.