La calunnia - Il Barbiere di Siviglia

Slander is a breeze

A light air, considerably kind

That insensitive, sharp air

Lightly, sweetly

Begins to whisper

Softly softly, down low

Whistling under its breath

Flowing, buzzing,

In people’s ears

It deftly breaks in,

Making people’s heads and minds

Dazed and swollen.

Coming out of the mouth

The uproar is growing:

Gaining strength bit by bit,

Already flowing from place to place,

Seeming like thunder or a storm

In the heart of the forest,          

It’s whistling, rumbling,

And it will freeze you with horror.

When the overflows and the bursting stops,

It begins again with twice the force

Producing an explosion

Like a cannon shot,

An earthquake, a storm,

A general tumult

That makes the air reverberate. 

And the miserable wretch

Chastened, trampled

Under the public scourge

Will drop dead if he’s lucky.

Ruggero Raimondi sings Don Basilio's aria from Rossini's Barber of Seville.
Versailles, 1980.