A lot has happened since our experience on Italia's Got Talent, and I am finally able to catch my breath and tell you all about it. Let us backtrack a little…
As we approached our fifth consecutive season at our beloved Teatro Eden we thought it was only appropriate to call our brand new dinner show “Chez LaLa”. Following the same format of its two predecessors, Chez LaLa is once again an eclectic mix of material ranging from pop to opera, with a hint of very chaste Burlesque. Cher’s “Welcome to Burlesque” and Christina’s “But I am a Good Girl” were woven seamlessly with Bette Midler’s “Bugle Boy” and Puccini’s “Oh Mio Babbino Caro”, to mention just a few. Some of the songs of course required dancing, and let me tell you, between the corsets, the heels and the notes I had to sustain it certainly wasn’t easy, but of course I could count on Stuart’s flattering choreography. Stuart also shared several numbers on stage, singing and dancing up a little storm with me. The show was happily overbooked at almost every performance, and wonderfully received by our ever loyal audience and by a lot of new friends who came to see us from all over the Country on the strength of our TV performance. It will remain as a special event feature at Teatro Eden, and live promo video will be released later this year.
February saw us once again in Venice for the Carnival. The day after my show at a wonderful party for the International Association for Venice Carnival at Palazzo Benzon, I had the pleasure and the honour of being featured at the most important masked ball of the whole Carnival, Il Gran Ballo della Cavalchina. Held at Venice’s hystorical La Fenice Theatre, the Ball is a charity event awarding a diverse array of prominent personalities in the entertainment field at an international level. I was lucky to share the stage with such personalities as legendary tenor Jose Carreras, soprano Katia Ricciarelli, pop star James Blunt, the ever wonderful Ennio Marchetto, Italian pop icon Patty Pravo and many others. I cannot describe the feeling of stepping onto the Fenice stage and singing two Mozart arias from “Così Fan Tutte” in the opening performance conceived by Venice’s legendary MC Prince Maurice Agosti, and let me assure you, the party afterwards was something to remember.
The spirit of Venice Carnival and the splendour of Rococo are also the themes behind our latest video project, the most ambitious we ever put together. I first considered singing Shirley Bassey’s Get This Party Started when we saw it performed in Las Vegas as the opener of Frank Marino’s “Divas” show. When we became friends with wonderful costume maker Francesca Serafini of Antico Atelier, who made my costume for the Cavalchina Ball, we decided to shoot the video as a time warping vision bringing my favourite fashion elements together. We loved working with a wonderful team of dear friends, with director Fabio Fiandrini at the helm and my trusted make up wizard Sergio who created the most wonderful makeup ever. You can enjoy the video and the delightful Making Of featurette right at the bottom of this page.
As summer begins so do new dreams and projects. The beginning of the next season will see us developing our classical side a little further. We were commissioned to write Il Farinelli Ritrovato, a show about the great castrato Farinelli, the greatest singer of the Baroque era and an honorary citizen of Bologna. I will illustrate his life and accomplishments in a show featuring another
excellent counter tenor. I myself will sing three classic arias associated with him accompanied by an 18 piece symphonic orchestra, and all with no microphone in sight. So you must forgive me as I love you and leave you, but I must run to do my vocalizing…
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