Opera’s first leading lady
QUESTION What was the first opera written by a woman?
LA LIBERAZIONE di ruggiero dall’isola d’alcina (The Liberation Of Ruggiero From The Island Of Alcina), a comedy ballet in four scenes, was the first opera composed by a woman.
It was written by Florence-born poet, music teacher, singer and lute player Francesca Caccini, nicknamed La Cecchina. It premiered on February 3, 1625, in Florence and is her only surviving complete opera.
It was part of the entertainment for the visiting crown prince of Poland. He was so charmed that he arranged for it be performed in Warsaw in 1628, making it the first opera performed outside Italy.
Francesca, like her father Giulio, who was one of the founders of the new genre of opera, was employed by the powerful Medici family at their court in Florence. She was their highest-paid musician.
Giulio’s song amarilli Mia bella is still performed today.
In recent years, Francesca’s work has been rediscovered and performed in Germany, Switzerland, Ferrara in northern Italy, Stockholm, Minneapolis, Brighton, Marseilles, Boston, Vienna and at the Longborough Festival Opera in the Cotswolds.
e. Felix Schondorfer, Stoke Poges, bucks.
QUESTION Can livestock grazing stop fertile land turning into desert?
THE age- old practice of animal and crop rotation prevents desertification. It is only recently that fertilisers and giant monoculture farms have changed the picture.
In the wild, herding animals such as bison, buffalo, antelope and elk, cluster together as protection from predators. As they move around, they eat the vegetation and their manure is mixed into the ground by their hooves.
In this way, large herbivore herds maintain fertile natural meadows and support the germination of diverse habitats of grasses, flowers, herbs and trees.
Without predators, herd animals spread out and graze randomly. Manure is not mixed into the soil by their hooves, the ground dries up, loses vegetation and smaller wildlife leaves or dies out.
Between 1907 and 1933, there was a misguided effort to kill predators in U.S. National Parks under the euphemistic title Animal Damage Control.
Removing the wolves from Yellowstone Park to protect the elk herds was an ecological disaster.
The number of elk ballooned over the next 70 years, over-grazing vast tracts of land and trees. This had a domino effect on other wildlife.
Fewer trees sent the songbird population into decline. Beavers lost their food source and the lumber to build their dams. The lack of dams caused streams to erode, degrading the conditions in which willow need to grow.
By the time the grey wolf was reintroduced in 1995, there was just one beaver colony left in Yellowstone. The park’s diversity has since improved, but it has a long way to go.
Removing herd animals has a similarly deleterious effect. When bison were slaughtered to extinction, the prairies became a dust bowl.
Ideally, a farmer annually rotates several fields: one fallow, one with cattle and the rest with crops that replenish the soil with nutrients.
Carbon is incorporated into the soil rather than being released into the air.
These fields will have living soil, full of bacteria and worms, not the sterile dirt used by big agriculture, which requires huge quantities of chemical fertiliser.
Traditional ploughs scratched a temporary channel into which seeds could be dropped. With a modern plough, the soil is completely turned over, damaging its living components and weakening its structure, causing the organic component to break down irreparably.
andrew nicholl, norwich, norfolk.
QUESTION Why isn’t there a M7 motorway?
THE reason there isn’t a M7 is that the A7, which runs from Carlisle to edinburgh, has no need for an additional motorway to relieve congestion.
Motorways are numbered according to the A-road they replace or augment.
The original numbering of A-roads is based on the A1 to A6 radiating from London, with the A7, A8 and A9 radiating from edinburgh.
The main junctions are numbered clockwise, eg from A10 on the A1.
brian M. russell, Chadderton, Gtr Manchester.
QUESTION In English, why does the second person only have ‘you’ while the first person has ‘I’ and ‘me’?
THE previous answer about the neglected informal forms of address thou, thee, thy, thine and thyself reminded me of an old story from my side of the Pennines in Rochdale.
An old man whose wife has just passed away asks for the words ‘Lord She Is Thine’ to be inscribed on her headstone.
Visiting the cemetery later, he finds the mason has written: ‘Lord She Is Thin.’ The old man complains, pointing out that there is a missing ‘e’.
The mason promises to remedy this. On his next visit to the grave, the widower finds the inscription now reads: ‘e Lord She Is Thin!’
ian Duckworth, rochdale, Lancs.
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