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06/12/2018
loewenherz
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Ombra mai fù
This is the name of the probably most famous aria of the Baroque, from the opera Xerxes by Georg Friedrich Händel. 'Ombra mai fù...' means in English: 'Never was the shadow...', and then it goes on: '...a plant more sweet and pleasant, sweeter.' ('...di vegetabile cara ed amabile soave più.') The sung object of the aria is the plane tree, which was considered sacred by the people in Xerxes' homeland Persia - whose shadow is so lovely, sweet and pleasant.
Ombra mai fù is dallying and melting - and yet from today's perspective (even for advanced opera aficionados) not easy to hear. Because it is sung by a male soprano - in Handel's time actually by neuters, today by countertenors - and anyone who has once accompanied a recital with male singers singing the upper voice knows how unusual this is despite all technical mastery.
That 'never a shadow would have been more lovely and pleasant, sweeter' than that of these red woods (of which astonishingly few are listed in its ingredients) would probably be exaggerated. Nevertheless Tom Ford's Bois Rouge - perhaps the most unknown of the numerous private blends - is Handel's famous aria related in character: flirting and melting and yet challenging and alien even to trained noses.
Bois Rouge is strangely not a wooden scent. And then one. He blinds a lovely and sweet, very feminine floweriness - lily of the valley and jasmine - with a serious, masculine forestiness, bitter and brittle like tanned skin - expansive and voluminous. As if a great, muscular man sang in Persian war armour with a dazzling soprano devotedly of the grace and beauty of the shadow of the plane tree.
Conclusion: in my commentary on Purple Patchouli I named the Blue Mauritius among the Tom Ford Private Blends. Here's the red one.
Ombra mai fù is dallying and melting - and yet from today's perspective (even for advanced opera aficionados) not easy to hear. Because it is sung by a male soprano - in Handel's time actually by neuters, today by countertenors - and anyone who has once accompanied a recital with male singers singing the upper voice knows how unusual this is despite all technical mastery.
That 'never a shadow would have been more lovely and pleasant, sweeter' than that of these red woods (of which astonishingly few are listed in its ingredients) would probably be exaggerated. Nevertheless Tom Ford's Bois Rouge - perhaps the most unknown of the numerous private blends - is Handel's famous aria related in character: flirting and melting and yet challenging and alien even to trained noses.
Bois Rouge is strangely not a wooden scent. And then one. He blinds a lovely and sweet, very feminine floweriness - lily of the valley and jasmine - with a serious, masculine forestiness, bitter and brittle like tanned skin - expansive and voluminous. As if a great, muscular man sang in Persian war armour with a dazzling soprano devotedly of the grace and beauty of the shadow of the plane tree.
Conclusion: in my commentary on Purple Patchouli I named the Blue Mauritius among the Tom Ford Private Blends. Here's the red one.
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