Скачать или смотреть Florentine Quartet - Drigo's Serenade (1914)

Serenade
Riccardo Drigo (composer)
Francis J. Lapitino (arranger)
performed by Florentine Quartet
Recorded February 25, 1914 (Camden, New Jersey)
Victor 17600

Personnel:
Howard Rattay: violin
Clement Barone: flute
Rosario Bourdon: cello
Francis J. Lapitino: harp

Riccardo Eugenio Drigo (1846 - 1930) was an Italian composer of ballet music and opera. He was also a conductor and a pianist. Drigo is noted for his long career as director of music of the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg, Russia and was considered to be one of the finest theatrical conductors in Europe.

In 1900, while working on the score for ballet, Les Millions d'Arlequin, Drigo took daily walks through the St. Petersburg Summer Garden and along the banks of the Neva River, all the while thinking of his native Italy. During one such daily walk, Drigo composed the ballet's famous "Serenade", which he set to the accompaniment of a solo mandolin. In 1919 Drigo was finally repatriated to his native Italy and he accepted the post of kapellmeister to the Garibaldi Theatre in Padua where he had begun his career many years before. In 1926 he composed the comic opera Flaffy Raffles for the Opera company of Padua's Teatro Verdi, and in 1929 his last work was given, the opera Il garofano bianco ('The White Carnation') at the Garibaldi Theatre. He spent the remainder of his life conducting and composing masses and various songs, including a vocal version of the famous "Serenade" from Les millions d'Harlequin, which Beniamino Gigli made a world-wide hit.