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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 23 OCTOBER 2022 COMMERCIAL 12 Everything beautiful and meaningful! Luca Minnelli in unprecedented live concert in Malta FROM serenades in Gondola in Venice to collaborations with the big names of world music such as Brian May of Queen, and recently with Lady Gaga, the Maestro Luca Foffano aka Minnelli is according to the well-informed the next real big star of Italian opera and pop, the only one capable of collect- ing the witness of Andrea Boc- celli, so much so that the author of Con te partirò Francesco Sar- tori declared that his story and his voice were a new source of inspiration for him. Minnelli has spent the last two years of Covid-19 preparing himself, recording and mixing in the best studios together with the top international musicians, to arrive in the spring to excite and speak the whole of Italy with his songs, his albums, his tourn- ee blockbuster, even a book: and the single that just came out of great success on the web with guest star May is just a taste. We met him, wanting to get to know him and make him known before everyone else: because we are sure that in a couple of months he will be in every news- paper… ahead of his live concert in Malta on Saturday 19th No- vember at the Eden Arena, In- tercontinental Hotel. Luca, how was your passion for music born and what are your influences? I have loved music since I was a child, especially opera because my parents were great lovers of it, and I have understood since then, always feeling it with them, that I wanted to dedicate myself to that in life. My favorites were Pavarotti, Carreras, Domingo, all the great voices in short. But I was a versatile listener: I also loved Queen, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin so much ... I listened to them and sang to obsession with my peers. So since I was a kid, while I was studying and then graduating and starting to work, I committed myself to learning to sing and to play different instruments, and with some friends I started a band; we did both covers and our own songs, ranging from many musi- cal genres. A path that went on throughout the 80s and 90s, be- tween local music competitions, piano bar evenings, street par- ties, and singing lessons from the world-famous soprano Mi- chela Remor, up to what I can consider my true carried out in 2004, when I started singing ser- enades on a gondola in Venice, obtaining an unexpected and re- markable success that took me almost everywhere in the fol- lowing years, making me one of those Italian artists much more active, known and appreciated abroad who with us, with many international collaborations be- hind us that I remember with emotion, such as the one with Dionne Warwick to name just one. Here I would like to deepen your special relationship with the magical and romantic city of Venice, with its canals and gondolas ... In this regard, I would like to say that the gondola is the sym- bol of Venice as much as the li- on and one thing that saddens me is that if today one goes to Venice he will find that all the gondoliers have put the gondola not in the water but on land be- cause they have no more work. The singers of the gondola ser- enades are in great difficulty, like many of us singers special- ized in live evenings in general: this category has remained for a long time without the possibility of performing and earning, and without any help. Venice itself is a city that needs to show the world all its art and beauty and Covid-19, stripping it of tour- ism, has sent it frighteningly in- to crisis: the world of those who work in restaurants, hotels, bars has suffered a terrible blow from the which still has not recovered, and this makes me suffer be- cause with Venice as you rightly said; I have a very strong emo- tional relationship. Let's go back to music: from the gondolas of Venice you landed on an international career that has made you sing all over the world in the last 20 years… Yes, I really spanned a lot ge- ographically, from America to Russia, think that the new turn my career has taken comes from a concert I held in Abu Dabi, in the Emirates, where I met my current manager, Franco Tre- visiol, a very particular figure, because he was not born as a music manager, he became one for me. He is an entrepreneur, with a degree in psychology and a lover of music and art, and when he listened to me he fell in love with my voice and proposed me to set up a dream together, become my manager, create a label, called Voice and music, and making albums and tours that enhanced my talent as he thought it deserved, because he believed I could aspire to so much more. I thought about it and decided to dream with him, and from there everything that I have done and I am prepar- ing in the last two years comes from: I thank Franco because he pushed me to believe even more in myself and in my artistic pos- sibilities, to be more ambitious, which is already giving impor- tant results and I would like it to take us soon to the Sanremo festival among the big names. How did you go about making this dream come true, this new adventure? In these two years we have been very active: if Covid-19 globally was a catastrophe that has brought so much suffering and death, and many problems also to the entertainment world, at least however not being able to sing live, having to wait and give up so many scheduled con- certs, it gave us the opportunity to spend all the time preparing ourselves in a really thorough way: we are very perfectionists, and we wanted that for when this new solo project of mine was launched, for which I took the pseudonym of Luca Minnelli ( another tribute to Venice, be- cause the Minnellis were a local noble family from the times of the Venetian maximum splen- dor, but I don't mind if someone instead thinks of Liza and Vin- cente), everything was ready in an impeccable way. So we start- ed looking for important people in the entertainment world to collaborate with, and in fact the ensemble we put together on a musical level is exceptional. We have already recorded two CDs, which will be released soon, which we recorded partly with the Budapest Symphony Or- chestra conducted by Maestro Diego Basso in the same studio in the Hungarian capital used by all the big names including Dis- ney, and partly in one of the best studios in the world. Italy, that of Ron in Garlas- co, to then have the master- ing performed in New York by Sterling Sound, which are the world number one, with songs signed by names such as Franc- esco Sartori, the author of "Con te partirò" and other songs by Boccelli, and in which musi- cians from the bands of Vasco Rossi and Renato Zero play: my philosophy is that either things are done in a super professional way or they are not done right. Just think of the first single I re- leased, "Forever and Ever with You", written by the well-known Venetian producer and compos- er Stefano Panizzo alias Steven Tibet, where guest stars are the star of the Broadway musical Kerry Ellis and especially Brian May of Queen, in which myth I grew up since I was a kid. In fact this was a point I want- ed to get to: how was the hu- man relationship with May?