Legrenzi – Che fiero costume

Song Information

Title: Che fiero costume

Music: Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690)

Text: Unknown author

Sheet Music

Important note: This Baroque Italian aria is perhaps best known as it appears in Schirmer’s Twenty-Four Italian Songs and Arias, most of which had appeared previously in the Anthology of Italian Song of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The pieces in that collection were sometimes set with less than historically accurate accompaniments. For more stylistically correct versions of most of these common Italian songs and arias, consider purchasing 26 Italian Songs and Arias, edited by John Glenn Paton, which is available in Medium High and Medium Low editions that each come with an accompaniment CD.

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Song Text

Che fiero costume
D’aligero nume,
Che a forza di pene si faccia adorar!
E pur nell’ ardore
Il dio traditore
Un vago sembiante mi fe’ idolatrar.

Che crudo destino
Che un cieco bambino
Con bocca di latte si faccia stimar!
Ma questo tiranno
Con barbaro inganno,
Entrando per gli occhi, mi fe’ sospirar!

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