Oh, many though I could not name them all.
They include:
- Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs - settings by him of poems by others, and indeed his last as they were published and premiered in 1950, after his death in 1949.
- Brunnhilde's finale often called the Redemption Aria, followed shortly by four words shouted by, I think, Alberich, then the lovely narrative-instrumental closing music, of Gotterdammerung. This ends the fourth opera of Richard Wagner's "swords-and-sorcery" epic operatic tetralogy, The Ring of the Niebelung. (A.k.a. The Ring Cycle, though only the gold itself follows a cyclic narrative. The rest of the story is linear.)
These are all in German.
;
Also Nessum Dorma, from Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot (Italian).
The phrase means "let no-one sleep". Wikipedia gives the lyrics in both Italian and English, and summarises the story at this point. Although a rather twee-seeming love song with a glorious melody very familiar thanks to FIFA World Cup association and considerable popularity in its own right in concert recitals, it is part of a story that is really not at all nice, as indeed its own words do show!
It is said a guest-house in Devon adopted the title for its own name, but given its translation I doubt it the best "marketing" tactic for a holiday hotel.
Wikipedia describes its melody as having a "sixteenth" and a "whole" note. I wish we could keep their lovely names like crochet and quaver (one beat and half-beat respectively, in any time-signature, if I recall correctly), but I don't know how they translate into the vulgar-fraction names I think used in the USA. I heard an even worse horror on the radio recently though, by a singer too, talking of crescendo and decrescendo. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear....
