Antonella Ruggiero sings Giacomo Puccini in the new album
Exactly one hundred years after the death of Giacomo Pucciniwhich occurred on November 29, 1924 at the age of 65, Antonella Ruggiero public “Puccini?”. The album is available in CD Digipack, vinyl and digital formats on the Libera/BMG label, with the artistic and musical production of Roberto Colombo and the musical adaptation of Francesco Buzzurro in songs where the guitar is present.
The Genoese musician declared about the album: “’Puccini?’ Yes, Puccini with his arias that are so current and can be sung by any voice. Because a song, when it involves and excites, belongs to everyone. I imagined Puccini who, listening to these particular transpositions, enjoyed emerging from the granite territory of the world of opera, becoming in turn his own protagonist in the present day.”
“Puccini?” it is a work started by Antonella Ruggiero in 2001 with a first approach to the world and arias of James Puccinirecording a first piece in the studio, which was followed in 2009 by a reinterpretation of seven arias, in an electronic context, starting from the original scores. The choice of the repertoire was made following the love for the individual arias, without considering whether they were arias for a female or male voice. Not even the shades are the original ones, but they were decided by looking for those that were most natural. Subsequently, in 2012, these and other songs were recorded with the musical adaptation of Francesco Buzzurro and, since then, every two or three years these engravings have been taken up and reworked, finally arriving at the final result.
Tracklist:
Hidden Harmony (Tosca)
And the stars shone (Tosca)
May she believe me (The girl from the west)
Oh my dear father (Gianni Schicchi)
Golden Dream (Golden Dream)
Who is Doretta’s beautiful dream (The Swallow)
Nobody sleeps (Turandot)
Lord, listen (Turandot)
Closed Mouth Chorus (Madama Butterfly)
He commented Elio Aldrighetti: “The title.
Here is the first thing that struck me about Antonella Ruggiero’s new project even before listening to the recorded material. Not simply a ‘Puccini’ without punctuation marks, which would have been succinct information of a neutral nature just to communicate the content of the album. Not even a ‘Puccini!’ with a clearly visible exclamation point, more suitable for a musical or the presentation of a variety show number. None of this. Antonella and Roberto Colombo put a question mark after the illustrious name. And a question mark has always been a balcony overlooking the unknown, a bet in the dark poised between fear and the desire to delve into it, to take risks, it is the desire for unknown territories. The question mark is, in short, the graphic representation of adventure, of the unsafe and the unreassuring, perfectly in line with the experimental production to which the award-winning company has accustomed us so far and at the same time with the exoticism strongly present in the great composer’s work. Lucca. The signs of a very interesting job are all there; without even needing to take an act of faith.”.
On Giacomo Puccini Ruggiero also said: “This idea of reworking some songs by Giacomo Puccini is more than twenty years old, twenty-three to be precise. I have always found him modern and his production very similar to that of the Beatles: a serial author of undisputed successes. A man with his fragilities that he identified and entrusted to his female characters. Her constant search for solitude, despite the great success achieved, demonstrates the desire and need to focus on the particularity and sensitivity of the female world to try to understand its complexity. He has always been perceived as a great conqueror, but I believe that it was exactly the opposite: he was always conquered by the intelligence, as well as the beauty, in the most complete sense, of women. Not the spider that weaves the web, but the insect that remains prisoner in it.”
