Gianluigi Trovesi, Filarmonica Mousiké, Savino Acquaviva

Profumo di Violetta is Gianluigi Trovesi's journey through four centuries of Italian opera, played by the clarinettist and saxophonist with a north Italian banda. This is the wind and percussion band of town squares, also heard in the stage music of Verdi's operas. The title points both to Violetta, the heroine of La traviata, and to the scent of the flower. Its 23 sections run from Monteverdi's Orfeo to Puccini's Tosca, mixing arias and Renaissance dances with Trovesi's own pieces.

Trovesi plays piccolo clarinet, alto clarinet and alto saxophone, with Marco Remondini on cello and electronics and Stefano Bertoli on drums and percussion. The band is the Filarmonica Mousiké under its conductor Savino Acquaviva. Most of the instrumentation is by Corrado Guarino, with further arrangements by Rodolfo Matulich, Gabriele Moraschi and Natale Arnoldi, worked out together with Trovesi and Acquaviva. The music was recorded in September 2006 at Teatro Serassi in Villa d'Almè, near Bergamo, by Stefano Amerio. Manfred Eicher produced, and the mix was shared between Trovesi, Eicher, Acquaviva and Amerio.

The suite has a prologue, an epilogue and several chapters in between. Monteverdi's Toccata and Ritornello frame Trovesi's Orpheus pieces, where his clarinet rises to a piercing high register in Euridice. The two parts of Profumo di Violetta are his own homage to Verdi's heroine, set around Ah, fors'è lui. In Rossini's Largo al factotum the chain of Figaros gives way to a distorted, rock-like guitar solo over the winds. The closing Così, Tosca combines a funeral march with the Te Deum from the first act, while Trovesi bends notes over a drone.

Ivan Hewett in the Daily Telegraph found the record "funny, sentimental and charming". Duncan Heining closed his Jazzwise review with "Elegant and it swings." In Italy Musica Jazz made it a recommended record in November 2008. Writing in January 2009 for Audiophile Audition, John Sunier called it the most interesting ECM release in years. Several critics, among them Stefano Zenni in Il Giornale della Musica, heard Monk, Coltrane and Stravinsky passing through the opera material.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2068, first released on 17 October 2008.