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Ennio Morricone warms the audience at the Verona Arena
Ennio MorriconeâOnly the good die youngâ doesnât apply to Italian artist Ennio Morricone
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Ennio Morricone
'Only the good die young' doesn't apply to Italian artist Ennio Morricone. The 84-year-old film composer is a cinema legend whose plaintive, epic oeuvre still illuminates after more than 50 years.
His virtuosity invigorates more than 500 movies'from the deserts of 1960s spaghetti westerns to the young loves of romantic dramas. Even his remake scores have been featured in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards and Django Unchained.
At the Festival del Centenario series, Morricone once again was fortunate enough to witness the 100th birthday celebration of the Verona Arena in the fourth week of August.
This Roman Amphitheatre was transformed into an open-air opera house that specializes in stage productions such as large-scale operas and orchestras. It was quite a rare view since the previous Morricone venues were indoor halls. Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, an orchestra troupe of more than 100 people, entered the stage orderly by rows. Silence arrived as they started to play the 13-minute 'Varianti su un Segnale di Polizia' (Variations on a Signal of Police). This Tchaikovsky-ish suite is his tribute to two anti-mafia judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who were killed by the mafia in 1992.
Most of his selections that night were derived from signature movie scores directed by big directors such as spaghetti western pioneer Sergio Leone. Morricone presented compositions from the director's works: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once upon a Time in the West and Fistful of Dynamite while he also picked some numbers from Mauro Bolognini's Per le Antiche Scale (Down the Ancient Stairs) and L'eredità Ferramonti (The Inheritance) and Giuseppe Tornatore's Baaria and Nuova Cinema Paradiso.
As the audience took in the mesmerizing works, some vignettes from the movies came to mind, such as scenes with Salvatore and Elena, the dazzling couple from Nuova Cinema Paradiso or the moment when Peppino took money from the safe deposit box in Baaria. The outstanding musical vibrations might have caused the audience to feel as though they were inside the movie; an added bonus of watching a film scoring concerto.
Two sopranos sang beautifully in most of the scores.
An Italian-Swedish-born soprano, the elegant Susanna Rigacci appeared in 'Ecstasy of Gold', a famous chapter in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly composition. Her divine vocals accentuated the music, creating a bone-chilling feel in the audience.
While Morricone played the section called 'Il Cinema Dell' Impegno''including scores from La Luz Prodigiosa (The End of a Mystery), La Bataille d'Alger (The Battle of Algiers), Sostiene Pereira (According to Pereira). Portuguese singer Dulce Pontes was riveting, gracefully singing in the fado (Portuguese urban folk music) technique. She exuded a joyful feel ' unlike the formal-mannered Rigacci ' resulting in a similar vibe to another of Morricone's collaboration with Shakira.
Brass instruments were prominent in the score of Roland Joffé's The Mission. A stunning Oboe solo released a soothing ambience in 'Gabriel's Oboe'. The sparks continued in 'On Earth as It is in Heaven' , which had a soul-ascending mood at the end of the composition.
Next was 'Here's to You' from Sacco e Vanzetti. It sounded like a faster-tempo version of Sigur Rós' 'Vaka' on the piano intro. This song accompanied the title credits for the movie, a docudrama about two Italian immigrants convicted of murdering two men during the armed robbery of a shoe factory in Massachusetts in 1920. The Linco Sinfonico di Verona choir beautifully accompanied the concert as they created a melancholy feel.
A fistful of tears was a good enough result of the two-hour concert.
