Serenata celeste

(Mario Ruccione-Giuseppe Fiorelli) – Oscar Carboni - 1947

Written in 1947 for Oscar Carboni, Serenata celeste was immediately a huge success and was promptly incorporated into the repertoire of many singers, including Claudio Villa, Giorgio Consolini, Luciano Tajoli, Carlo Buti, Roberto Altamura, and Ugo Molinari. There was even bilingual version (in French and Italian) by Josephine Baker, entitled Sérénade céleste. The music was composed by Mario Ruccione, whose works included songs related to the fascist regime, such as La sagra di Giarabub or Faccetta nera. Here however, his melodic whimsy was let loose in a composition that immediately evoked the song’s flight towards the distant beloved. How joyous and modern Ruccione's melodic intuition turned out to be, and how dated and cloying Giuseppe Fiorelli's lyrics (although Enzo Bonagura’s name appears erroneously on the label of the 78 rpm by Oscar Carboni). For Forelli, composing verses for songs was a hobby and pastime, since his real work was that of running a restaurant of Neapolitan cuisine in Rome. Legend has it that one day he left the text of Serenata celeste on the table where Mario Ruccione was eating, never imagining that those words would have flown to the stage of the Olympia in Paris.