SHAKESPEARE, LA DONNA, IL SOGNO

Rêverie began life in Milan in 1996 on the initiative of composer and guitarist Valerio Vado with the aim of performing an original "ethnic-progressive" music inspired by European and Mediterranean culture, a mix of traditional Italian Renaissance and Baroque music with up to date sounds. After three interesting demos and a good live activity, in 2008 Rêverie finally released a self-produced debut album titled "Shakespeare, la donna, il sogno" with a line up featuring Valerio Vado (guitars, keyboards, backing vocals), Fanny Fortunati (vocals, percussion), Fulvia Borini (flute, mandolin), Alberto Sozzi (clarinet, keyboards, banjo, flute), Daniele Defranchis (guitars) and Mariella Mancuso (cello).

Most of the pieces on "Shakespeare, la donna, il sogno" (Shakespeare, the woman, the dream) come from the soundtrack for a theatre play of the same name written by Stefania Amato, Fanny Fortunati, Valerio Vado and Mariangela Zabatino. The play is set in Elsinore, in Denmark, where a company of musicians perform music from the Renaissance. At a given moment one of the musicians, by accident, evokes the spirit of Yorick, a joker at the ancient court of Elsinore, who comes to life again and tries to bring back to life also a "dark lady" lost in his memory. To do so he tries to remember his beloved woman through the verses of Shakespeare... Well, the soundtrack for this play features some English traditional tunes from the XVI-XVII centuries revised and arranged by the band and some original tracks in the same style. The overall sound is prevalently acoustic and if you like bands and artists such as Amazing Blondel or the Italian minstrel Angelo Branduardi I'm sure you'll like this album as well!

The short instrumental opener "Willson's Wilde" sets the atmosphere followed by "Sonetto 18" and "Sonetto 8". The English lyrics, as you can guess, are taken from Shakespeare's sonnets and are interpreted by Fanny Fortunati's delicate vocals... "Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy...". Another nice short instrumental, "A Toy", leads to two more sonnets, "Sonetto 47" and "Sonetto 147", then the instrumental "Passamezzo antico" introduces the last two tracks taken from the soundtrack of the play, "O Mistress Mine" and "Sonetto 130". The album features two more tracks not related with the play, "Plurestantay memoroj" and "Kiam alvenos la fino", sung in Esperanto and credited as bonus tracks. The atmosphere of the last two tracks is different from that of the previous ones and they sound a bit like fillers here, even if they do not waste the final result. All in all, I really think that this is a good album, especially for prog-folk lovers!