 By the final stanza, XV, the speaker has come so far from his original complacency as to have real empathy with the people of 18th-century Venice.The poem inspired a 1989 setting, in modern idiom but with musical quotations from Galuppi's works, by the composer Dominick Argento.The singer-songwriter Kris Delmhorst based her song "Galuppi Baldassare", the first track of her 2006 album "Strange Conversation" on the poem, using many of the words and theme as a basis for her own lyrics.