Giada Valenti: From Venice With Love: Torna a Surriento!!

Cari amici,

Come state?

I’m enjoying everyday of this wonderful summer.

I’m getting ready for this Saturday, August 7 to sing a few songs at the wonderful Sergio Franchi Memorial Concert, in Stonington CT. This is such a wonderful open-air event. The Concert take place in the garden of the Estate of Sergio Franchi. Every year more than 4000 people attend this event. We get to perform with a wonderful 40-piece string orchestra directed by Jeff Domoto. A very joyful event where people can enjoy all kind of music, from pop to classic, popular songs and arias from the opera! A nice mix of romantic music!! I really love this event, it’s relaxing and exciting as well.

I always get to stay at this beautiful place...so it's a kind of vacation too!!

I will take pictures and I will share them with you on my next week blog!! Here a few from previous years!

And talking about music today I want to share with you this very interesting story I discover a while back while preparing for a show. A story behind one of the most famous songs of the Neapolitan songbook: “Torna a Surriento”.

"Torna a Surriento", Come back to Sorrento”, is very famous Neapolitan song.

It said to have been composed in 1902 by Ernesto De Curtis to words by his brother, Giambattista, The song was copyrighted officially in 1905; it has since become wildly popular, and has been sung by performers as diverse as Beniamino Gili, Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Jose’ Carreras, Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Mario Lanza, Meat Loaf, among so many others.

The song was supposedly written at the request of a friend of Giambattista's, Guglielmo Tramontano, who was mayor of Sorrento in 1902 when the prime minister of Italy, Giuseppe Zanardelli, stayed at his hotel in that town.

At the time the city of Sorrento was suffering of very pour housing conditions and the streets were all broken making the transportation very difficult. So the songs was meant to celebrate Zanardelli's stay and to make him aware the beauty of Sorrento so to maybe have him investing some money of the site.