Back to the UK - Again!

Hi everybody!

I had a wonderful summer back in Italy, with quite a few concerts and the opportunity to spend again some time with family and friends.

More than anything, I appreciated the concert we did to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the publication of the first poetry book by the London poet Anthony Howell: with my great friends cellist Riccardo Pes and pianist Michele Bravin, we put up a programme revolving around Anthony's poems and his activity as performance artist and dancer. Amongst others, Riccardo and I performed three pieces by Battista Pradal and with Michele we did two songs by the great Michael Nyman - each one of them of course was a poem by Howell set to music. Two of the three Pradal pieces had in this occasion their world premiere (we performed the first one earlier this year in London at a poetry reading at The Room organised by Anthony himself), while I am quite sure the Nyman songs were performed for the first time in Italy. Anthony joined us to read his texts set to music by the two composers and a selection of the poems he wrote during his previous trips to Italy.

We were very glad the concert was sold out and the audience really appreciated the programme!

Anthony Howell  

Michele Bravin and Riccardo Pes

Michele and me

Michele, Anthony, composer Battista Pradal, me and Riccardo

I remember with pleasure two other performances. I sang again the role of Alfredo in Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, precisely 15 years after my first performance of it and with the same soprano singing Violetta, my dear friend Anna Viola, and I had the opportunity to sing for the first time Rodolfo in Bohéme by Giacomo Puccini with a lot of great singers - amongst the others the wonderful Giorgio Caoduro!

The last concert of this summer was in Croatia, where I return every year with great pleasure, and a few days after it I was back to the UK, ready to finally have a good holiday in Scotland! We did a nice trip: we went near Dumfries, in the South, for a friend's wedding, and then we drove up to the North to take the ferry to the Orkney. Claudia and I really love Scotland and we had a wonderful time there!

Here I am, wearing my kilt at the wedding...

The Highlands

Claudia and I took this little plane at the Orkney to go from Mainland to the little island of Papa Westray!