A series of concerts featuring the great artist of the world is being held in memory of Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana, the latest of which was entitled Italian Serenade and was held at the Thailand Cultural Centre in Bangkok on Thursday the 12th of June.
On stage was the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, however leading the orchestra was the Venezuelan conductor Antonio Cipriana.
All the music featured on the night was of Italian origin and the first half of the evening was highlights from famous Italian Operas where the orchestra were joined on stage by Carmen Ferraioli.
Ms Ferraioli is the principal Soprano with the Rome Opera in Italy and delighted the audience with rendition of Verdi's Overture from Nabucco, Puccini's 'O mio Babbino Caro' from Gianni Schicchi & 'Sola, perduta, abbandonato' from Manon Lescaut and then 'Voi lo sapete oh mamma' from Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana afterwhich a breather for the audience and Ms.Ferraioli as the Thai musicians eased into the melancholic Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana. This was music of true beauty and brought back images of the movies in which this piece was used such as Raging Bull & The Godfather part 3.
Then 'Io son l'umile ancella' from Adriana Lecouvreur by Cilea followed by the dark and brooding 'Suicidio' by Ponchiella from La Gioconda and then back to maestro Giocomo Puccini for 'Vissi d'arte' from Tosca. Ms. Ferraioli brought such presence, warmth and passion to all the roles she had to play, a mighty stretch for any musician but one that she accepted with ease and grace.
After the interval guests could be seen checking their programme as to what was coming next, everybody new that it was a selction of famous film music and featured the immensely talented trumpeter Nello Salza and as the orchestra started to play the opening bars of the theme music from 'Life is Beautiful' everybody was wondering where is the man with the horn? And then in perfect timing coming in from the wings, his trumpet soaring was Nello. Anybody familiar with Italian cinema will have heard the unique sound that Nello emanates from his trumpet. He has played on the soundtrack to some of the most famous Italian movies ever made – some of which he was going to recreate for us with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra.
Life is Beautiful continued from the elegant beginning into the bossa-nova segment of the score in which you could see that Nello was enjoying himself as much as the audience. We were the treated to music from the Sergio Leone epic 'Once upon a time in the west' which was of course penned by the godfather of Italian cinema: Ennio Morricone.
Then another classic, this time the poignant score from Il Postino, again it was impossible not to rekindle the images from the movie.
Nellos playing was so passionate and also so fluid, he was obviously very much at ease and almost made it look like he was busking his way through the set – this can only come from someone who has had a wealth of experience and an ability to identify with the music.
And then we returned to Ennio Morricone, Nello has done the honours on many of Morricone's films incuding The Mission and Once Upon a time in America however the theme was Italian Cinema, so we stayed in Italy as Nello gave an outstanding performance from the movie The Legend of 1900 followed what it my opinion is the greatest movie ever made: Guiseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso.
Nello closed the set with a medley of older pieces by what some may call the founder of Italian Cinema: Federico Fellini, which celebrated his unique partnership with Nino Rota.
The audience had been mesmerized by Nello's performance and for the encore he was joined on stage by Ms.Ferraioli for an energetic duet (he of course used his horn as his voice) of O Sole Mio.
This was a wonderful evening and a befitting remembrance of Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana