Omaggio a Federico E Giulietta

Caetano Veloso | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 4, 2001)
• Original Release Date: 1997
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Nonesuch
• ASIN: B00004X0PI
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #214,709 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yet another wonderful live album from Caetano, November 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Omaggio a Federico e Giulietta (Audio CD)

This is a recording of Caetano Veloso's concert performed in Rimini at behest of Fondazione Fellini, and the performance is dedicated to Giulietta Masina and Federico Fellini. Hence the multifaceted content of the album. There are Nino Rota tunes from Fellini's films (listen, for example, to the gorgeous 'Que Nao se Vé, with Portuguese lyrics by Caetano), Brazialian tunes somehow connected with Caetano's perception of cinema and Fellini's films(both by Caetano & others), an Irving Berlin tune 'Ginger e Fred'(Caetano's English pronunciation lets him down a bit but who cares?) and a traditional Portuguese song 'Coimbra' which Caetano sings in European Portuguese,(and which exemplifies rather effectively the differences in pronunciation of Brazialian and Portuguese, in case you're interested). The five-piece band (consisting of Caetano, Jaques Morelenbaum, Luiz Brasil, Jorge Helder and Carlos Balla) sounds wonderful. I bought this album together with Prenda Minha live album, and these two albums exemplify beautifully what Caetano's ingenuity is all about; the sombre and quiet, rather European-sounding 'Omaggio' and the more upbeat (even though it too has its quiet moments) & very Brazilian 'Prenda Minha' are taken together a brilliant exemplification of Tropicalismo in practice. Variety and mixing of styles and influences but everything in essential connection with the whole, and isn't that one of the traditional definitions of true art. Thank God for Caetano. As long as he makes music, we are not going to run out of beautiful thigs.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars painfully beautiful, December 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Omaggio a Federico e Giulietta (Audio CD)

I am Caetano's unabashed, utter fan, but I was unprepared for the poignancy of this album. The liner notes, by Caetano, are in Portuguese, but I feel compelled to offer a stab at translating his luminous prose describing the events which led to this recording: "I was in New York mixing my album 'Circulado' when I received the letter from Maddalena Fellini suggesting, in the name of the Fellini Foundation, that I perform a concert in Rimini in tribute to Federico and Giulietta. Federico's sister told me that Giulietta had heard the song that I had written about her and that she had been touched. Maddalena lamented (almost as much as I) the fact that the couple had died without our having been granted, whether by chance, destiny, God or the gods, the opportunity for a personal encounter. She had read some of my declarations in the Italian press of my love for the cinematic poetry of Masina/Fellini. Love which stood out as something special in my general admiration of Italian cinema of the 40s, 50s and 60s. The fact that this feeling found a response in the mysterious love of some famous and anonymous Italians for my own music led her to consider the possibility of such a concert. The letter stunned me. On the day that I finally arrived in Rimini to sing, my voice presented a kind of problem which I had never, until that moment, encountered: deep down in my larynx, something almost impeded me from emitting any noise whatsoever, except for a few sounds which, with discomfort but not pain, I managed to produce, and which came out considerably limpid. Such that my control over pitch and especially over intensity was exasperatingly limited. It was cold and damp in Rimini, but I was also filled with enormous emotion. This emotion involved sadness, exalted pride, and some vague fears relating to the meaning of my life. The show that we had prepared already had, for me, a magical atmosphere. And, in our rehearsals as well as at the moment in which we performed, the musicians' degree of inspiration tenderly fell over me like a shadow. They seemed to me beatified. I knew that I would sing 'Giulietta Masina,' but also 'Cajuina' and 'Lua, Lua, Lua, Lua'. I was sure I'd sing 'Trilhos Urbanos' too, as it was necessary to put into perspective my boyhood in Santo Amaro, where I first saw Fellini's films and from whence came to me this metaphysical feeling of a recuperation of a lost time, which so resembles the feeling which I perceive in these films." The recording communicates all this: limpidity, beatitude, intense emotion and the same kind of sweetly self-deprecating metaphysical puzzle which was Giulietta Masina's face. It also serves as an illuminating aural companion piece to Caetano's autobiographical book, "Verdade Tropical," soon to be published in translation, which discusses at length the connections between his ideas about cinema and his own musical oeuvre.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Magico Caetano, by an Italian fan, September 17, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Omaggio a Federico E Giulietta (Audio CD)

Maybe it's not Caetano's live masterpiece, not as perfect as "Prenda minha" or "Circulado vivo", but it's anyway a precious delight for all his fans (and for those of Federico and Giulietta). His emotion in performing an homage to one of his favourite filmmakers - as he writes in the booklet - and that of the Italian audience, that keeps on calling his name, is perfectly perceptible even through the recording: you can almost touch it. It seems that Caetano profited of this opportunity to go back to the roots of his sentimental sensibility, to his childhood in Santo Amaro, in a personal journey where he is not ashamed to take us and to rediscover such heterogeneous materials as "Come prima", "Dama das camelias", "Patricia" and even the Neapolitan "Luna rossa" (most of them contemporary of Fellini's movies), whose "kitsch naivety" his voice, as sweet, as intensive, as expressive as ever - despite the problems he reports - dignifies turning them into intimate timeless lullabies. By the way, his Italian accent is charming and his Neapolitan absolutely delightful (Neapolitan sentimentalism is rather close to Brazilian). He also gives new versions of two great standards such as "Chega de saudade" and "Let's face the music and dance", both in a kind of village fair style, which sounds very Fellinesque. (Nevertheless I prefer the "Circulado vivo" version of "Chega de saudade", more terse and intense). Of course there are also Caetano's songs, not many indeed, all chosen to fit the occasion, starting from his homage to "Giulietta Masina", the reason why he had been invited by the Fondazione Fellini to give this concert, then "Trilhos urbanos", "Lua, lua, lua", "Cajuina" and the marvelous "Coraçao vagabundo", more poignant than ever.
In short, not to be missed by all true fan of Caetano (and of Federico and Giulietta).
P.S. It may seem strange to talk leisurely about music after the 11th of september, but beauty and poetry are just the kind of things we are not ready to give up, aren't they?