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If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)
Artist: Frances Saville
Author: Giuseppe Verdi/Francesco Maria Piave
Label: Bettini cylinder
Year: 1896
Soprano part in the first act, thirteenth scene of Verdi's opera Rigoletto (1851), based upon Victor Hugo's stageplay The King Drinks. This is the part where Gilda, the Count of Mantua's daughter, laments theatrically for minutes over unreachable love. Critics shunned her sobbing for its shameless and vulgarising cheapness. First Gilda: Teresa Brambilla at La Fenice in Venice.
Covers:
Dame Nellie Melba [home-recording in London, supervised by Fred Gaisberg, on her own label (Melba Gramophone)]
Graziella Pareto [for Gramophone]
Tony Martin [in Here]
Lloyd Price [melody in Just Because]
Peels [diva shouts in Juanita Banana, with a storyline about a Mexican singer with diva aspirations; n°1 B]
Henri Salvador [French version Juanita Banana; top 10 Fr]
Quartetto Cetra [Italian version]
Cocktail Trio [NL-version; hit NL]
Joan Sutherland [with a young Luciano Pavarotti as her father]
In French film Le Goût Des Autres, the confusion between this aria and the Peels hit stands for the gap between fine arts and pop. Apart from this direct link joining Verdi's sobbing Gilda with The Peels' novelty Juanita, this same melody line reveals a second Original, delved from even further back in time, way past Verdi's era: just listen to the Allegro from the Sonata for Piano and Violin in F from W.A. Mozart (K. 377) and find out.
If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)