Organization

Conductor

Eckehard Stier

Singer

Silvia Nair

Soloist

Fausto Leali

Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana

A voice for a dream

Sicily

Italy

Public

Porgy and Bess

Il Gattopardo - "Ballabili", Suite for Small Orchestra  (1963) OST

Evita

Cats

The Phantom of the Opera

Approved

Silvia Nair will take the audience on a journey into the musical genre whose stages, in chronological order, will be marked by authentic successes of the genre.

Like other works,  George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, which, after its first production in Boston on September 30, 1935, once it reached Broadway, had received an unfavorable reception because of its racial subject matter and the choice of  to exhibit African American singers, later reached such popularity as to become one of the best known and most represented. The opera was composed between 1934 and 1935 by Gershwin to a libretto by Edwin DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin who adapted Heyward's 1925 novel of the same name which describes the life of African Americans in Catfish Row, an imaginary suburb of Charleston. He explained the choice of giving the title  Porgy and Bess to a folk opera in an article published in 1935 in the «New York Times»: " Porgy and Bess  is a folk tale. Its people naturally sang folk music. When I first began work on music, I declared myself against the use of the original folk material because I wanted the music to be all in one piece. So I wrote the spirituals  and  foksongs myself  . But they are still a music and, therefore, being in opera form,  Porgy and Bess  becomes a folk opera ". Taken from the scene before Act III,  Summertime , the lullaby sung by Bess to the child she is caring for, is one of the most famous pieces of Gershwin's entire production.

In this concert, the world premiere of the piece L'ombra sul camino by Silvia Nair is presented , which is taken from the album Luci e ombre , produced by the Ala Bianca/Warner label and released at the end of 2020, of which an English version with the title Lights and Shadows will soon be released on the international market. It is a song with a rock-symphonic musical structure of a narrative-cinematographic nature as the artist addresses an interlocutor who, in the end, turns out to be her alter ego .

A classic is the song  New York, New York ,  composed by John Kander in 1977 for the film of the same name by Martin Scorsese, starring Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. Just Liza Minnelli and Frank Sinatra brought this song to success which has become the anthem of the city of the Big Apple.

This is followed by an authentic masterpiece by Nino Rota, author of the soundtrack, composed in 1961, for the film The Leopard by Luchino Visconti (1963) , in which the director had foreseen a long dancing scene of about 45 minutes which constitutes the culminating point of the whole film. On this occasion some of the Ballabili will be performed . For The LeopardRota adapted to the realistic conception of Luchino Visconti who, for this scene, wanted a soundtrack perfectly in style, capable of recreating the nineteenth-century setting with sounds and, to this end, he gave Rota an unpublished waltz by Giuseppe Verdi, given to him from a friend, the actor Romolo Valli, who, in turn, had bought it at a stall. The composer not only orchestrated the piece for a small ensemble capable of reproducing an occasional orchestra, but he wrote six other perfectly styled danceables which he had hastily recorded to provide the playbacksto Luchino Visconti who, in turn, preferred to use these makeshift recordings as a soundtrack because they were judged more realistic, making the dance scene one of the most famous in the history of Italian cinema, not only for the skill of the actors Burt Lancaster and the beautiful Claudia Cardinale, but also for a music that impresses the ear and memory for its extraordinary and fascinating melody.

Born into a family of musicians, being the father a composer and the mother a violinist and a pianist, Andrew Lloyd Webber, in his brilliant career, has received many awards and recognitions including 3 Tony Awards, 3 Grammy Awards, an Oscar, a Golden Globes, an Emmy award and six Lawrence Olivier awards. The most important part of his production, which also consists of a collection of songs, a set of variations, two soundtracks and a Requiem, is made up of 17 musicals, represented for decades both on Broadway and in London's West End. Among his successes is certainly the musical  Evita , written in 1978 on texts by Tim Rice with whom Webber has collaborated since the beginning of his career. The very famous song  Don't cry for me, Argentina is taken from this musical ( Don't cry for me, Argentina ), which is sung by Evita from the balcony of the Casa Rosada, after her husband's election. Her most famous song,  Memory , also known thanks to the recordings of Elaine Paige and Barbara Streisand, however, uses a text written by Trevor Nunn which was inspired by Eliot's poem,  Rhapsody on a windy night. 

Also taken from the album Luci e ombre , Ti rivedrò by Silvia Nair is a ballad of great emotional intensity dedicated to the mother in which the intimate aspect is enhanced by the delicate orchestration made up of piano and strings.

Inspired by the famous novel by Gaston Leroux,  The Phantom of the Opera  (1986) was composed by Webber, however, in collaboration with Charles Hart, who wrote the lyrics of the songs, and Richard Stilgoe, who wrote the libretto and additional lyrics. A page that has also established itself in the symphonic repertoire, the Overture  describes the moment in which the chandelier lights up with a flash immediately after the auctioneer places a bet that the electric light can scare away the ghost. Directly related to it is  Wishing you were somehow here again .

English

A voice for a dream by Gershwin, Rota, Lloyd Webber, Fra (2023/2023), Dirigent Eckehard Stier

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