Dear friends, I wish to share a very special emotion with you all. On 19th November Prima Verdi is being released: my first album dedicated to a single composer. I recorded it in June 2020, we were all still shaken by the first three months of lockdown yet the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino had the strength to believe in the project and engage its wonderful orchestra conducted by Maestro Marco Armiliato for the occasion.
This album is a journey through “my” Verdi, from the operas of the so-called years of hard labour to his last works. Above all it is a pathway through the vocality of Verdi, to sustain and fulfil the idea that the composer himself had of “his tenor”. Of course, I think that Verdi knew exactly what to ask of a tenor: certainly not stentorian expression, but quite the opposite: interpretation and in-depth exploration of the character through music. I have always paused to admire the meticulousness and skill in the dynamic markings that Verdi provides for the performer, the continual search for a deep relationship between words, rhythm and music. Each one of Verdi’s indications is indispensable for a proper understanding of the character; far from being a cage that limits the performer, it is a detailed canovaccio that opens up a world of music, dramaturgy and theatre, an immense range of opportunities for the musician who is prepared to make the composer’s indications his own. This is my homage to the great father of Melodrama, there where words become music. But it is also a stage on my journey of attachment to Verdi as a man, father of the Nation and deep down inside, a revolutionary.
