Roberto Alagna
2008 Sicilien
For the first time, the great French tenor has recorded a repertoire that he could sing every day without ever getting tired of it: "These songs are a part of me".
The first language Alagna spoke, as well as the first one in which he sang, was Sicilian. He's not hiding the fact that The Sicilian is also a search for identity: "I suddenly felt Sicilian while recording this disc, just like I suddenly felt French while singing La Marseillaise (on Bastille Day of 2005 at the Place de la Concorde). This is the disc of a son of Sicilians looking for his roots."
"In this recording", says Roberto Alagna, "I wanted to present the traditional song as the equal of the tango, of jazz or of the bossa nova." To achieve this, he once again called upon Yvan Cassar, who had already produced the album Roberto Alagna sings Luis Mariano, his incursion into the repertoire of operetta. "Who am I to make a disc of traditional Sicilian music?" the producer asked at first. "But the songs are magnificent, the melodies are unbelievably beautiful and I took advantage of Roberto's knowledge of this repertoire to convey it in the most universal way."
Alagna recorded the songs in the studio, surrounded by a few musicians, then Cassar added some extra touches: festive brasses on A lu mircatu, a bamboo flute and oriental percussion for Carrettieri, the flavours of Greece in the 3/4 time of Li Pira, the light, melancholy sound of the mandolin for Si maritau Rosa: taken all together, the musical portrait of a brilliantly colourful and constantly changing Sicily, a Sicily of poetry at times radiant, at others heartrending, but always intoxicated with emotion.
Two of Yvan Cassar's musical heroes were Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, and he “discovered that they had listened to a great deal of Sicilian music". So, as if to offer an even more overt universality to some of these anonymous Sicilian folk melodies, such as Mi votu, he provided woodwind and strings in the grand tradition of Italian film music.
And how could one resist the atmosphere of the cinema when arranging Parla più piano, the famous love theme from The Godfather, the only song in Italian in the whole album?
Tracklist:
Traditionnel
1. Abballati
Larry Kusik, Nino Rota
2. Parla più piano (Thème du Parrain)
Traditionnel
3. Mi votu
4. Ciuri, ciuri
5. Carrettieri
6. Li pira
7. A lu mircatu
8. Sicilia bedda
9. Lu me sciccareddu
10. N' Tintiriti
11. Si maritau Rosa
12. Vitti 'nacrozza
Frédérico Alagna
13. Ninna nanna
Traditionnel
14. C'e la luna mezzo mare
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