De Simone Roberto

Oltre ad essere un’interprete di livello, la cantante Maria Pia De Vito ha al suo attivo progetti sempre interessanti e originali. Ricordiamo Il Pergolese, omaggio jazz alla musica del compositore settecentesco, e il recente Coraçao dedicato alla musica brasiliana con i testi tradotti in napoletano (ne abbiamo parlato in occasione di Umbria Jazz Winter 2017/18). Stavolta la musicista recupera la forma della moresca, antica danza di origine araba con i testi generalmente di carattere grottesco. Nella Napoli, città di origine della solista, questa forma fu molto popolare: uno degli artefici della sua riscoperta in tempi moderni è stato Roberto De Simone che l’ha inserita nella sua Gatta Cenerentola, ma al tempo stesso vari gruppi vocali (King’s Singers e Orlando Consort) la propongono nel loro repertorio.

With Ninna Nanna the haunting tones, dramatic intensity and richly characterized singing of Pino De Vittorio once again grace a recording project led by Franco Pavan. Call it Wiegenlied, berceuse, nana, ninna nanna – or countless other terms from around the world – the lullaby, with the rocking of the child’s cradle, is possessed of a captivating charm, all neatly captured in this new collection with the lulling of De Vittorio’s hypnotic voice.

In his 2007 production for the Maggio Musicale in Florence, French opera director Nicolas Joël – named as the next director of the Opéra de Paris from 2009 – presented his reading of Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny). An adventure story and a tale of grim pursuit and unrelenting misfortune, of faith, renunciation and - fi nally - death and forgiveness, Verdi’s La forza del destino is, like an operatic road movie, also a portrait gallery of the different places and curious people the main players meet along their way.

This is a tremendously enjoyable production of an opera that can be difficult to bring off. La forza del destino is so epic that it runs the risk of sprawling, and if the performers and the stage director don’t exercise self-discipline, the opera quickly loses its focus. I don’t think anyone will argue that this is the best-sung performance that he or she ever heard—in spite of its difficulties, there are many good audio-only recordings of this opera—but this is one of those times when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The last time I reviewed a DVD of this opera in these pages, it was a version dating from 1983 from the Metropolitan Opera, with Leontyne Price, Giuseppe Giacomini, and Leo Nucci in the lead roles… Raymond Tuttle