Midweek Muse: Judith Triumphans

 I felt like Vivaldi, but not any Vivaldi that I'd heard recently.  And lo, the universe delivered:

There's a little history of the Oratorio here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juditha_triumphans.

If you don't know the original story, give it a read: http://drbo.org/chapter/18001.htm.

And here's the place where the oratorio was originally performed--also, incidentally, the place for whose singers a lot of Vivaldi's music was composed--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ospedale_della_Pietà.  It's actually a rather fascinating glimpse at some historical horrors, and the way that they were turned, mostly, to the good, thanks to the institution of religious Ospedali.