Laid in earth

This week the United States reached an appalling milestone in the COVID19 pandemic: we surpassed 500,000 deaths directly related to the virus. There have been 2.5 million deaths globally, and we accounted for 20% of them.

President Biden and Vice President Harris marked the occasion for us Monday evening with the lighting of candles at the White House (captured by Jabin Botsford for WaPo):

One candle for each 1000 deaths.

But it’s fitting that for my offering today, I should also commemorate it. So I’m sharing “Dido’s Lament” from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido & Aeneas. This has to be one of the simplest arias ever; such a small number of words. But it covers an enormity of loss, which is what we’re feeling now.

Here’s Annie Lennox and the London City Voices in a remote performance from last December.