Arrivederci

Hailed by the Independent as “the most exciting young male talent in opera today”, Vittorio Grigolo follows up his Sony debut album, The Italian Tenor, with a fresh and personal take on Italy’s exceptional musical heritage – with his new album, Arrivederci.

While The Italian Tenor was devoted to a purely classical operatic repertoire, Vittorio’s new album, Arrivederci, combines his selection of beautiful arias with songs from the past century that are steeped in the Italian tradition. Recorded with Pier Giorgio Morandi conducting the Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Parma, the album is a deeply personal homage to the music with which the great tenors of the past have thrilled generations of music lovers.

The title has been chosen for a reason. As Vittorio explains, Arrivederci means ‘see you again soon’, it holds the promise of a time when our eyes will meet again”, and it offers the opportunity to “revisit the values and colours of an Italian tradition which often get brushed aside by a faster pace of life.” Taking his precedent from the musical culture of his country at the turn of the 20th-century, Vittorio’s fashioning of arias together with songs gestures back to a time when opera and popular song were merging on both the opera stage and Italian streets.

The album picks up where The Italian Tenor left off, with incomparable arias such as Verdi’s “La donna è mobile” (Rigoletto), Cilea’s “Il lamento di Federico” (L’arlesiana) and Giordano’s “Amor ti vieta” (Fedora), before moving on to greatly loved Italian songs that tenors such as Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli and Mario Lanza introduced to a 20th-century audience.

Along with the Mediterranean sun-drenched voice and instinctive Italian flair, Vittorio also brings a beautifully refined, fresh and sensual interpretation to these greatest of Italian songs. To the quintessentially Neapolitan tunes of “Core 'ngrato” (Cardillo), “Non ti scordar di me” (De Curtis), “Mattinata” (Leoncavallo) and “Torna a Surriento” (De Curtis), Vittorio Grigolo adds gems familiar from his childhood in Rome: “Chitarra romana” (di Lazzaro) and “Arrivederci, Roma” (Rascel) – both reflecting the sounds and musical tradition of a period in Vittorio’s life he will never forget. With the songs on this album spanning the whole of the last century, the final expression of this musical heritage can be found in Dalla’s popular hit “Caruso”.