Armida Records 11-021122
artist: MARK MILHOFER tenor | MARCO SCOLASTRA piano
LUCIO DALLA (1943 – 2012)
Caruso (1986)
In June of 2022 I made a dream come true! Having researched and published the 9 songs written by Caruso and selecting 39 of the 90 songs written for him, I was given permission to record them in his home, now museum, just outside Florence on a beautiful Tuscan hilltop. And at the end of our six days of recording, before treating ourselves to a well-earned Bistecca Fiorentina, we had the idea to also record Lucio Dalla’s homage to Caruso.
This haunting song was inspired by Dalla’s visit to Sorrento in 1986, when he stayed in the Excelsior Vittoria Hotel, in the same room where Caruso had spent a few months shortly before returning to the city of his birth, Naples, dying there on August 2nd 1921. Dalla heard stories about the last days of Caruso, and wrote about Caruso’s relationship with his young wife, or an unnamed female student, and his strong connection to America and the ships that crossed the ocean full of immigrants.
Marco had never played the song before but I had sung it as an encore in recitals – we worked on it together for a while and then recorded it in just a few takes. It felt great, there was a strong connection between us that made it so easy for me to sing, as though we had been performing it together for years. It will now be a regular encore piece in our series of Caruso recitals that we will be performing in 2023 to honour Caruso’s 150th Birthday (which falls on February 25th).
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Recorded at the Villa Caruso di Bellosguardo – Lastra a Signa, Firenze (Italy) in June 2022
Sound Engineer and Recording Producer: Luca Ricci