Il Canto della Sirena

Description

The human voice has always been bound to myth. In the ancient imagination, few images capture the mystery of song as vividly as the siren, whose voice was said to summon sailors from across the waves, suspending time and bending will with its irresistible allure. To stand before a singer is to stand at that same threshold: the moment when breath becomes vibration, when words and music fuse into something that commands both heart and mind. The program gathered under the title Il canto della sirena is an invitation to listen for that enchantment across centuries, styles, and cultures. In the voices of Naples and Venice, in the echoes of Paris and Moscow, in the work of composers both celebrated and nearly forgotten, the siren returns, forever renewed. Here soprano Valentina Varriale and pianist Marco Sollini become its interpreters, custodians of a mystery that is at once ancient and new.

The opening work, Il canto della sirena op. 58, is a creation by Marco Sollini himself, written in March 2025 and dedicated to Valentina Varriale. Sollini, long admired as pianist, here turns to composition to fashion a central emblem for this program, setting a text by Salvatore Barbatano that evokes the siren shimmering in moonlight, her words weaving enchantment on the silvered sea. The music is vaguely hypnotic and in part vocalized, playing with harmonies that shift between major and minor, where dissonances between voice and piano accompaniment are turned into timbre and colour. The soprano’s line floats, half song and half incantation, while the piano offers a shimmering undercurrent, a surface where reflection and depth meet. Barbatano’s verses unfold like a nocturnal vision: «When the moon silvers the night and mirrors itself in the sea, you gentle Siren, with your words enchant and seduce».
From this contemporary invocation, the program turns back to the refined Francesco Paolo Tosti. Born in 1846, Tosti rose from humble origins in Abruzzo to become one of the most admired song composers of his time, eventually serving in London as teacher to royalty. Yet beneath the aristocratic polish, his music carries Italian warmth. Songs such as Sogno or Chanson de l’adieu breathe a melancholy sweetness, poised between intimacy and elegance, while Marechiare and ’A vucchella belong to the golden vein of Neapolitan tradition. Tosti’s genius lies in shaping melodies that seem inevitable, as if discovered rather than composed, floating over accompaniments of deceptive simplicity. They belong to that world of salon song where sentiment is distilled, yet they never lose the freshness of genuine feeling.
Gaetano Donizetti, one of the towering figures of bel canto opera, is celebrated for his ability to infuse song with lyrical purity and dramatic urgency. Yet away from the stage he delighted in lighter canzonette, often in dialect. Me voglio fa’ ’na casa imagines a house built upon the sea, a whimsical dream set to a lilting melody and undulating piano rhythm. The charm of the song lies in its sincerity, the joy of crafting music not for grand theatres but for voice and keyboard in intimacy. If in Lucia di Lammermoor Donizetti’s soprano cries with tragic inevitability, here she smiles, and the sea is not perilous but a playful horizon.
Pasquale Mario Costa, born in Naples in 1858, inherited that spirit but clothed it in lush harmonies. Closely associated with the poetry of Salvatore Di Giacomo, he created enduring settings such as Catarì and Era de maggio. The latter, in particular, breathes the fragrance of springtime love, remembered long after blossoms fade. Costa’s melodies rise with unhurried grace, the piano gently rocking beneath. There is bittersweet nostalgia in his work, for love that cannot be forgotten, for seasons that return yet never the same.
Even more rarely heard today is Pietro Labriola, active in the nineteenth century, whose songs once delighted Neapolitan audiences. His ’O Cardillo embodies the lightness of the canzone, combining folkloric freshness with gentle sophistication. Labriola, both composer and singer, straddled popular and cultivated worlds, and his works give us a window into a Naples where music spilled from balconies and courtyards as naturally as conversation. To revive his voice today is to hear the laughter and sighs of another century, the siren transfigured into the songbird perched outside one’s window, captivating not through grandeur but immediacy.
With Eduardo Di Capua, born in 1865, the Neapolitan song reached its apogee. His name is eternally linked with ’O sole mio, yet his oeuvre abounds in other treasures, including the passionate I’ te vurria vasà. Di Capua’s gift was for melodies so direct they could be sung in the street and yet so moving that they remain in the repertoire of great voices. Their simplicity is deceptive: beneath the clear line lies instinctive craftsmanship.
The northern light of Venice gleams through Gioachino Rossini’s La regata veneziana, three sparkling songs from his Péchés de vieillesse. Written in his later years, long after he abandoned the opera stage, they are nonetheless infused with theatrical wit. Each follows Anzoleta as she anticipates, watches, and rejoices in the boat race. The piano ripples like water, the voice bubbles with excitement, and Rossini’s famous gift for rhythm animates every bar. They are miniature operas without staging, comic scenes compressed into a few pages.
Alfredo Catalani, born in 1854, was a composer of operas now less frequently performed, yet his Chanson groenlandese op. 21 shows another side. Inspired by northern landscapes, it evokes a world remote from Naples. The voice drifts over icy expanses, the piano echoing desolate horizons. Catalani’s gift for atmosphere, also evident in La Wally, emerges here in concentrated form.
From France comes Maurice Ravel, master of refinement and colour. His Vocalise en forme de habanera is wordless, a study in rhythm and sensuality. The voice traces languid arabesques, caressed by the piano’s habanera pulse. It is at once exercise and enchantment, testing the singer’s control while offering an intoxicating atmosphere.
The lineage of the Vocalise reaches its zenith in Sergej Rachmaninov’s celebrated example, the fourteenth of his op. 34 romances, composed in 1915. Sung on a single vowel, it distils emotion to its essence, arching phrases soaring above dense harmony. In it speaks the Russian soul, torn between passion and melancholy, exile and memory. It has become one of the most beloved testaments to the voice’s power, transcending language and even time.
It is no accident that Marco Sollini responded with his own Vocalise op. 40, written in November 2020 in the dark days of the pandemic and dedicated, like op.58, to Valentina Varriale. Conceived as an implicit homage to Rachmaninov, it unites lyrical vocal line with dense pianistic writing, including a powerful solo passage. Romantic and dramatic, it speaks of isolation, yearning, and resilience. The absence of words becomes a mirror of those silent months, when music was one of the few voices left to console. Sollini here acknowledges Rachmaninov yet writes in his own idiom, giving voice to a historical moment.

Thus, the circle is complete: from Rossini’s playful barcarolles to Costa’s nostalgic blossoms, from Ravel’s impressionist arabesques to Rachmaninov’s expansive lament, from Tosti’s elegant serenades to Sollini’s contemporary invocations, the program traces the many guises of the siren’s song. It is a journey across geographies and centuries, but also an inward journey, listening for what has always drawn us to music: the voice’s uncanny power to enchant. When the final chord fades, we may remember the ancient myth, but we also recognize something far closer: the truth that in the right hands, in the right voice, song still holds us captive, as it always has, as it always will.
Giuliano Marco Mattioli © 2025