FERNANDO DE LUCIA
Fernando De Lucia sang in many of the world’s greatest opera houses from his début at the San Carlo of Naples in 1885.
His old friend Raffaele Esposito, proprietor of the small Neapolitan recording house of Phonotype, offered him the opportunity of making records for his company.
The twin facts that De Lucia lived for most of his life in his native Naples, and that his artistic life coincided almost precisely with the heyday (1880 – 1910) of the Neapolitan song, give particular authenticity to his interpretations of those songs, which make up almost one quarter of his enormous recorded output. The great ones of the genre – De Crescenzo, De Curtis, De Leva, Gambardella, Tirindelli, Tosti, Valente – all dedicated songs to him. Their works, very often written in minor keys, frequently embody a strain of sadness: it is well said that ‘they seem to sigh, to laugh and then to die, with words and music so interdependent that that one could not exist without the other’.
His old friend Raffaele Esposito, proprietor of the small Neapolitan recording house of Phonotype, offered him the opportunity of making records for his company.
The twin facts that De Lucia lived for most of his life in his native Naples, and that his artistic life coincided almost precisely with the heyday (1880 – 1910) of the Neapolitan song, give particular authenticity to his interpretations of those songs, which make up almost one quarter of his enormous recorded output. The great ones of the genre – De Crescenzo, De Curtis, De Leva, Gambardella, Tirindelli, Tosti, Valente – all dedicated songs to him. Their works, very often written in minor keys, frequently embody a strain of sadness: it is well said that ‘they seem to sigh, to laugh and then to die, with words and music so interdependent that that one could not exist without the other’.
http://www.historicmasters.org/special-issues/phonotype-recordings-of-fernando-de-lucia/
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