Music to celebrate a lifetime of love?

February 25, 2012 9:42 AM

Classical / opera music help: My partner has set up an beautiful slideshow of pictures and film of his parents' wedding in their village in Italy as a present for their 50th wedding anniversary. Help us with the music!

My partner and I are going to his parents' 50th wedding anniversary and he created a slide show on Powerpoint to play at the celebration. It includes a film of the wedding that his parents have very likely not seen in 40+ years.

He has picked out Puccini's "Ah, quegli occhi...; Quale occhio al mondo puo star di paro" from Tosca for the first half, and we're looking for something for the second half.

He wants the tone to be reverential, and romantic, with a similar pace. Maybe a little more celebratory and not as sombre as
the Tosca piece. Italian composer would be best, but not essential.

Help us mefites!

(He is doing a second one with Adriano Celentano music of the family, which is more fun and upbeat.)

posted by girlpublisher to media & arts (7 answers total)

I see you already have Puccini, so you may not want more. But my first thought was O Mio Babbino Caro.
posted by ldthomps at 10:22 AM on February 25, 2012

Not quite classical, but if you want something classy and ravishingly lyrical playing in the background, you can't beat YoYo Ma playing Ennio Morricone.
posted by Pantalaimon at 10:36 AM on February 25, 2012

How about Donzinetti's Una Furtiva Lagrima from L'elisir d'amore? Words and English translation on Wikipedia.
posted by thatdawnperson at 10:38 AM on February 25, 2012

It's hard (in my opinion anyway) to follow Tosca, but...
Solo arias, Lola, bianca come fior di spino (mostly instrumental, with a serenade), La dolcissima effigie, Ecco ridente il cielo, Cielo e mar, Augelletti, che cantate (sorry about the birds, but otherwise it's lovely).
Duets:
Ah! Verranno a te sull'aure
You might be able to pull something out of Teco io sto or O sarò la più bella.
Da tutti abbandonata
Pur ti miro is glorious (here with soprano and countertenor, though there are recordings using tenor instead) if you don't mind the context.
posted by notquitemaryann at 12:16 PM on February 25, 2012

What length of time do you need?

Also, the Tosca selection you ave using is smack in the middle of the Tosca/Cavaradossi duet in the first act, which normally starts at "Mario! Mario! Mario!" There is a full six minutes of material before "Qual occhio al mondo" and the complete duet runs to around 13 minutes. Perhaps this might be plenty of music already? It's one of the great operatic love duets of all time (BTW, it's hard to do better than the Milanov/Björling recording, which captures some of Jussi's finest recorded work). The full Tosca duet has plenty of playful moments, especially in the beginning.
posted by slkinsey at 4:19 PM on February 25, 2012

This quartet from Puccini's La Rondine is warm and romantic (it's a toast to love), it is somewhat lesser known than a lot of the composer's big hits (winning you the "wherever did you find that music?" prize) and-- this is no small consideration-- it always makes me cry like a little girl.
posted by La Cieca at 10:48 PM on February 25, 2012

I wanted to thank you all for your fabulous suggestions. We want them to hurry up and have another anniversary so we can use them all.

We ended up going with another Puccini piece, O soave fanciulla. While the overall context of La Boheme is tragic, that duet has a great moment where Mimi says asks, "what if I go with you?" which in the context of my partner's parents takes on another sense -- my father-in-common-law went back to his home village to find a bride to whisk back off to Canada. He met his bride, and they were married within 40 days of meeting, after which she went with him to the new world, and they've been happily married for 50 years. It's a stretch but we thought it worked.
posted by girlpublisher at 6:13 AM on March 6, 2012