GENESI

Franco Battiato comes across as one of those composers who is so talented and creative that he gets bored easily and so has gone in many musical directions during his long career. I clearly didn't do my homework for this one as we get a modern classical album with an orchestra, choirs and many opera singers, performing this very ambitious project in a live setting. The music on this album was recorded on three different nights(3 acts) within around a period of a week in the spring of 1987. The visuals were as important as the music as we get a screen with visuals, a ballet, and other stage performances going on. And the list of people involved is staggering.

To this day I'm thankful to have grown up in Canada where opera and classical music are a pretty much unheard of, unless you search for it. Give me my RUSH and Neil Young please, those are our musical roots and heroes up here. We get 21 songs worth around 64 minutes and there's just little for me to latch onto here. The two tracks that do work for me are the openers for the first and second acts. I especially am into the 9 opener of act one where we have no vocals plus plenty of atmosphere and darkness. That I can handle. The liner notes mention that the texts used here came from Sanskrit, Persian, Greek and Turkish sources and adapted by Battiato.

I have a few albums by Franco that I value, especially his 1973 album "Sulle Corde Di Aries", but this 1987 recording is completely different and alien to me. Barely 3 stars.