Ampico Drigo Serenade 57343-F Trans Paolo Romano Gertz 1914 Italian Ballet

Description

Rom Wikipedia
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 careeras 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 Darlequin, 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 ballets 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 Paduas 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 Dharlequin, which Beniamino Gigli made a world-wide hit.