ROMANCES - VENTURA,MAZAR

ROMANCES ( CVLD204 )

Author : FRANCESCO PAOLO TOSTI
Performer : VALERIA FUBINI VENTURA, SONIA MAZAR

Available in: CD File, CD

Traces

01 - Romances on Italian Texts, Collection II: No. 15, The Serenade
02 - Romances on Italian Texts, Collection II: No. 4, I Don't Love You Anymore
03 - Romances on Italian Texts, Collection IV: No. 10, The Fisherman Sings!
04 - Romances set in Neapolitan surroundings: No. 9, Malla
05 - Romances on Poems by Gabriele D'Annunzio: No. 8, I Would Like
06 - Romances based on poems by Gabriele D'Annunzio: No. 10, A vucchella
07 - Romances on Italian Texts, Collection II: No. 9, Dream
08 - Romances on Italian Texts, Collection II: No. 3, The Last Song
09 - Romances on Italian Texts, Collection II: No. 1, I Would Like to Die
10 - Romances of Abruzzo Inspiration: No. 6, Abruzzo Guitar
11 - Romances based on poems by Gabriele D'Annunzio: No. 11, Four Songs of Amaranta. "Dawn separates the shadow from the light."

Notes

CLASSICAL. Words by Cesareo, Errico, Mazzola, Pagliara, Dei Fiori, D'Annunzio, Stecchetti, Cimmino, Cognetti. All music composed by Francesco Paolo Tosti.
Valeria Fubini Ventura soprano, Sonia Mazar grandpiano.
Digital Recording made at Eden-Tamir Music Center Hamaayam, Ein Karem, Jerusalem on January 2005

Francesco Paolo Tosti was born in Ortona in 1846. He demonstrated a precocious passion for music, particularly singing, by becoming a student of Mercadante at the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples. He earned his living in the early years of his career as a music and singing teacher in Ancona. Dissatisfied with provincial life, he moved to Rome, where he performed as a singer, making the most of his beautiful tenor voice. In the capital, he met many prominent figures, including Princess Margherita of Savoy, who chose him as her singing teacher. His acquaintance with D'Annunzio and the painter Michetti were crucial to Tosti's career: many of his most beautiful romances were composed to D'Annunzio's lyrics.
Tosti's extensive musical output consists almost exclusively of compositions for voice and piano, which can be further divided into chansons, romances, popular Italian songs, and songs. His work enjoyed varying fortunes throughout the twentieth century, depending on the cultural and social climate in which it was enjoyed and performed. With his over three hundred and fifty romances, Tosti undoubtedly brought autonomy to this genre, which until then had lived in the shadow of melodrama. Tosti created the romance as an autonomous and original form: in it, the sweet melodiousness and the simplicity of the melodic line blend perfectly with the poetic text, always chosen with refined sensitivity from the works of the major Italian poets of the time and sometimes even from those of foreign poets such as Hugo, Verlaine, De Musset, and others. Impervious to the avant-garde winds that blew strongly in those years, he gave vent to a refined melodiousness, predominantly sentimental but always fresh and tasteful. He enjoyed undoubted success in Umberto I's Italy and in Victorian England, even if he was often criticized for being content with this social success in the elegant salons of the Belle Époque.
Called by some the "Italian Schubert," he has the undeniable virtue of immediate enjoyment and recognizability, and it is precisely on this quality that his great success has been founded. This ease of listening and immediate enjoyment can be criticized as a flaw, but they can also be considered a great quality: his romances have no room for preciosity or unnecessary technical superstructures foreign to his personality. Behind this apparent simplicity and immediacy, we still find his poise and innate refinement, which have contributed to making his romances still accessible in a cultural and social context so distant and different from the one in which they were created.
(Enrico Fubini)