savopardo

Great final album of "his majesty" Blackmore with Rainbow......a perfect mix between the albums with R.J. Dio and Deep Purple....

I completely agree with what David wrote.....This is a great, great album....Still I'm Sad will later be revisited in the last Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow - Stranger in Us All, with Doogie White on vocals, and it will be reinterpreted, sung, in my opinion, with dignity....

Let's say this CD isn't bad, and I consider Turner a good AOR singer... among the three albums with Turner, I definitely prefer the "first" Rainbow... Difficult to Cure.... Street of Dreams can be found in two new versions reworked by Blackmore in the latest Blackmore's Night "Village Lanterne": the first sung only by Candice Night, and the second by J.L. Turner himself together with Candice Night... musically it's a bit more epic....

Well... I’m combining all the comments from "SOAP, mike84, strawberryNgarlic" to leave my comment on this Masterpiece; of a Ritchie Blackmore more "legendary" than ever!!!!!

Ghost of the Rose....I just say....Diamond and Rust: SUPERB!!!....and All For One: for medieval lovers, listen to Ballo In fa Diesis (I think that's the title) from the album La Pulce d'Acqua by Angelo Branduardi....Ghost Of The Rose is a little gem of the "alternative" discography of the great Ritchie....

Great Blackmore... since then I've continued to buy all his releases in this new project of his... this album is very very beautiful even though my favorite is between Fire at Midnight and Ghost of the Rose (in the latter I find the cover of Diamond and Rust by Joan Baez exceptional)... and I must say again, that I prefer him when he makes more "electric" pieces (in the latest 2006 "Village Lanterne" he redoes Child in Time... and a shiver runs down your spine...)... Anyway, returning to "Shadow...."... for me the best tracks are: the title track, Play Minstrell Play... and Wish You Were Here.

...the only "flaw," if it can be defined as such, is that in Rome it had to be performed in French (the original language of the libretto)...because, in my humble opinion, in English, in some passages, it almost takes on a tone of an operetta...but this, of course, does not change my assessment of the composition...

...I don't rate this album because I would give it a 2 1/2... but 2 is too low and 3, for me, is too high... I think a bit like Copernicus says... and as a result, I find it a bit colder or the coldest in his entire discography.... Perhaps it was produced musically a bit more in line with the 80s music business... and I don't appreciate those years very much, with rare exceptions of a few artists, even more so from a Waters who has gifted us with gems that didn’t follow the music of the moment, but that, rather (in fact, without “rather”), was the music that followed them/him (Pink Floyd)... Anyway, it's an imprint of "his world"... For the record, it seems that in his new tour 2006 (The Dark Side Of The Moon....) he will also perform some tracks from this album....

...So Zuckina... apart from the fact that these 2 pieces were written, by Waters' own admission, in just a few hours, due to his "emotional involvement" with Irak, I believe he must have wanted to focus more on the lyrics than the music... and the fact that you are contradicting yourself in your various responses... well... it's quite obvious... but of course, everyone is free to have their say. I too thought that after RADIO KAOS, he had nothing left to say to me... but alas, to my great pleasure, with Amused... and Ca Ira, he proved that he is still here... But then, he himself replied to an American journalist (sorry, but I can't remember who) who attributed the release of Ca Ira to the choice of a bored 60-year-old, whether to buy sports cars or to create an opera... He replied that he had already bought sports cars, and that with Ca Ira, he had nothing to prove to anyone but to himself ("I have money for another 100 lives, I could even afford to live off my savings")... So let's let him "prove" and do what pleases him most and not be swept away and "twisted" by the disposable market, and let's wait for the release of the 2 new rock albums he already has ready, which, according to him, he will release next year (after the new "The Dark Side Of The Moon in tour 2006" that will touch Italy in June)... LET'S HOPE!!!!! (also because, for the umpteenth time, Gilmour with his new cd, was not enough for me! At the end of the listening, I tell myself Great!!! ah, but they are not Radiohead, who wrote a masterpiece, it's "just" Gilmour who tried to be an "old" Pink Floyd... overestimating himself!!!)

Guys... I was there in Rome at the world premiere of Ca Ira... and guys... I had, due to a series of fortunate events (which I won’t bore you with, or we’ll get old), the chance to be in the middle of the party that Waters threw at the venue adjacent to the theater, and as a result, to shake hands (and not only with him, but also with all the singers of the opera, and more) with this man, now 62 years old but with a timeless spirit...
The opera (performed live with some flaws in execution, but still very emotional) is, in my modest opinion, a great work written by a genius mind/rocker, who spent at least 10 years of his life musically conceiving a genre he had never (or almost never) explored, resulting in a melody and musicality that are very simple and "easy" to grasp... In my view, this comes from Waters' lack of experience in the lyrical world, thus avoiding venturing into musically complex passages, from which it would then be difficult to get out.... Contemporary Classical Music?.... NO.... "Classical Music" of the old times... which hadn’t been composed for at least a century... For me, yet another masterpiece... because he tried... and he succeeded...