Ivano Melato
Incredibile melodia

This is a very important album. It holds a place of fundamental importance among all my CDs because it relates to my true musical world, namely classical and operatic music. And here I must tell you that I become another person, as I don’t tolerate any type of ignorance within my favorite genres. The subject of this review is Incredible Melody, an album by Ivano Melato, a flutist who played in the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and who here bestows upon us real masterpieces, all united by the fact that they consist of broad and splendid melodic arcs, essential for constructing a piece of classical (and operatic) music worthy of the name. The back of the small booklet accompanying this masterpiece explains that this musical project 'is the result of a collaboration between the Bolognese Cooperative Credit and Prof. Ivano Melato, a member of the bank'. To record Incredible Melody, the flutist from Molinella collaborated remarkably with the Florentine harpist Laura Papeschi; and the two united (indeed, crystallized) in a unique and unrepeatable duo, take us on an incredible musical journey.

Indeed, this album includes pieces created by various composers, among the most highly regarded for the most diverse contexts. And the particular thing is that one is moved from the beginning to the end!

We start with The Dance of the Blessed Spirits, from Act II of the opera Orfeo ed Euridice by Christoph Willibald Gluck (a highly important composer in the history of opera). Just close your eyes and listen to it in reverent silence. The next piece is the Pavane by Maurice Ravel, another classic. I cannot describe the profusion of splendid emotions one feels listening to this piece. Then we move to the symphonic interlude of the opera Thaïs by Jules Massenet, an extraordinary French composer, from whose very refined and ‘sharp’ operatic sensibility (and comprehensive compositional skills) emerged true masterpieces, including Manon (the other operas with similar titles are Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini, and Manon Lescaut by Daniel François Esprit Auber, a highly overrated French composer). The peculiarity of this piece is that the main theme of the symphonic interlude returns as the intro of the opera's final scene, in which Thaïs dies redeemed, baptized, and converted to Christianity. The next piece is the Entr'acte by Jacques Ibert, a great French composer, who, like the majority of composers working between the late 19th century and the very early years of the last century (consider, for instance, the extraordinary orchestrations of Maurice Ravel, including the one for the suite Pictures at an Exhibition, which Mussorgsky originally conceived for piano), a piece for sax, namely the Concertino da camera for alto sax and eleven instruments.