A te

"A te" is a song recorded by Italian singer-songwriter Jovanotti and written by Jovanotti himself with Franco Santarnecchi. After being included in the album Safari, the song was released as the second single from the set. Launched during the Sanremo Music Festival 2008, where Jovanotti was invited as a guest, the single became a commercial success, reaching the top spot of the Italian Singles Chart for eight consecutive weeks, later becoming the best-selling single of 2008 in Italy.

In 2009, the song received a nomination for the Mogol Award, created with the purpose to recognize the Italian song with the best lyrics.

Background

"A te" is a romantic piano ballad, written by Jovanotti and Franco Santarnecchi and produced by Michele Canova. The song is a love declaration to Jovanotti's partner, Francesca Valiani, who became his wife in September 2008. During an interview, when questioned about the inspiration for the song, Jovanotti explained: "I tried to put together the best love declaration I could write, even being far from reality... In fact I wrote it while I was far away from Francesca, and maybe in that status of distance I found the right inspiration".

I puritani

I puritani (The Puritans) is an opera in three acts by Vincenzo Bellini, although it was originally written with two acts and changed to three acts on the advice of Gioachino Rossini with whom the young composer had become friendly. The music was set to a libretto by Count Carlo Pepoli, an Italian émigré poet who Bellini had met at a salon run by the exile Princess Belgiojoso, which became a meeting place for many Italian revolutionaries.

The subject was Têtes Rondes et Cavalieres (Roundheads and Cavaliers), written by Jacques-François Ancelot and Joseph Xavier Saintine, which some sources state was based on Walter Scott's novel Old Mortality, while others state that there is no connection.

When Bellini arrived in Paris in mid-August 1833, he had intended to stay only about three weeks, the main aim being to continue the negotiations with the Paris Opéra which had begun on his way to London a few months earlier. However, these negotiations came to nothing, but by October he had decided to spend the winter in that city, especially as both Il pirata and I Capuleti e i Montecchi were to be given by the Théâtre-Italien that season.

Giuseppe Di Stefano

Giuseppe Di Stefano (24 July 1921 – 3 March 2008) was an Italian operatic tenor who sang professionally from the mid 1940s until the early 1990s. He was known as the "Golden voice" or "The most beautiful voice", as the true successor of Beniamino Gigli. He was also known for his long-term performance and recording association and brief romantic episode with the soprano Maria Callas.

Biography

Giuseppe Di Stefano was born in Motta Sant'Anastasia, a village near Catania, Sicily, in 1921. He was the only son of a carabiniere turned cobbler and his dressmaker wife. Di Stefano was educated at a Jesuit seminary and briefly contemplated entering the priesthood.

After serving in the Italian military (and briefly taking lessons from the Swiss tenor Hugues Cuénod), Di Stefano made his operatic debut in 1946 in Reggio Emilia as Des Grieux in Massenet's Manon, the role in which he made his La Scala debut the following year. He made his New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera in February 1948 as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto after singing the role in Riccione with Hjördis Schymberg in August of the previous year. After his performance in Manon a month later, Musical America wrote that di Stefano "had the rich velvety sound we have seldom heard since the days of Gigli". He went on to perform regularly in New York for many years. In 1957, Di Stefano made his British debut at the Edinburgh Festival as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore and his Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, debut in 1961, as Cavaradossi in Tosca.