Furlana

The furlana (also spelled furlane, forlane, friulana, forlana) is an Italian folk dance from the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. In Friulian, furlane means Friulian, in this case Friulian Dance. In Friuli there has been a Slav minority since the Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps (Maniacco 2002, 56), and the furlana may well have originated as a Slavonic dance. It dates at least to 1583, when a "ballo furlano" called L'arboscello was published in Pierre Phalèse the Younger’s Chorearum molliorum collectanea and in Jakob Paix’s organ tablature book, though its chief popularity extended from the late 1690s to about 1750. It is particularly associated with Venice because, at the time of its popularity, Friuli was a part of the Republic of Venice (Little 2001).

The furlana is a fast dance, in duple-time 6/8, though one exceptional example proves to be in quintuple meter, underlining the Slavonic associations also suggested by its title, Polesana, which in Italian can mean "a woman from Pola" (a city in Istria, neighbouring Friuli and a part of Italy until 1947), or may be from the Croatian word "polesa", meaning "rural", or "from the back woods" (Heartz 1999, 145–46). Originally the furlana was a courtship dance, performed by a couple. It was introduced to France by André Campra in 1697 (in L'Europe galante) and 1699 (in Le carnaval de Venise, in which the first of two furlanas serves as a dance entry for a troupe of Slavs, Armenians, and Gypsies), and it quickly became a popular theatre and social dance there (Little 2001).

Forlane (record label)

Forlane (from the French spelling of the furlana dance) was a French classical music label. It was founded in 1979 by Ivan Pastor, a former producer at Barclay Records, and Yves Roy. The company specialised in song repertoire and recorded artists including Jose van Dam, Dame Felicity Lott, Dame Margaret Price, Philip Langridge, Ann Murray and Graham Johnson.

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