The intertextuality of the music choice in Hannibal is. Not subtle. In S1E7, Hannibal tears up during the final song at an opera concert (it’s in aid of hunger relief - I hate him).
The aria responsible is called “Piangerò la sorte mia” from the A3S1 of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto / Julius Caesar in Egypt. The soprano is Cleopatra, who has just learnt that Tolomeo has defeated her in battle - how much I have lost in just one day, she sings, both my splendour and might, and Caesar, my beautiful god, probably dead. She reckons that she’s doomed, and historically, she is. In the Handel version, however, she and Caesar both survive, get married, and live happily ever after. Basically it’s an incredibly soppy piece of early 18th century operatic fix-it-fic for Hannibal to start weeping over.
Except. Cleopatra acts against the Egyptian people and allies herself to a man from Rome, who’s her natural enemy. Hannibal acts against his own interest by getting so close to Will, whose vocation unavoidably makes him Hannibal’s adversary. And it’s an opera, so the two blood-thirsty lovers survive, fall deeper in love, and change the world (or at least the geopolitical order of the ancient Mediterranean) to suit their own needs. What parallels could Hannibal possibly see between this story and what’s going on with Will and himself, right?
That’s bad enough. But this is also the episode in which Hannibal thinks that Will could have been violently killed and is very vocal about his relief that Will survived. Arguably, the delighted gasp he makes when Will turns up at his office almost unscathed is the very first uncalculated and unfiltered expression of emotion Hannibal makes in the entire show. And it mirrors the plot of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar’s love story absolutely perfectly.
