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Arts & Entertainment

Author Mark Rotella Speaks of Amore

Reads from his newest book and discusses Italian-American music.

It's odd that an evening devoted to a discussion of Italian-American music should bring to mind Lidia Bastianich.  Yes, Lidia Bastianich, the television chef who imparts great love for her native Italy while she demonstrates mouth-watering recipes on PBS stations. 

Author Mark Rotella spoke at the Sachem Library this week as part of their Celebration of "Our Italian Heritage" series.  Rotello read excerpts from his newest book, "AMORE: The Story of Italian American Song" and followed it with personal anecdotes of growing up as a third generation Italian-American in New York, Connecticut and now New Jersey. 

One of his most endearing recollections concerned Rotella's visit to Calabria where he and his father were able to locate long-lost relatives in the town where the Rotella family originated.  It was a tale told with great warmth and humor.

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"AMORE" is a book described as a celebration of what Rotella names the "Italian Decade" in American music:  the years after World War II and before the Beatles invaded the world's musical tastes.  In this particular period, Frank Sinatra, Perry Coma, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and others ruled the airwaves with one popular song after another.  Their styling was smooth, sleek and classy.  Their music also brought a special feeling to the pop music of its era.

During the question-and-answer session that followed Rotella's talk, many of the people in attendance shared stories about how they still listen to this music which is played on such radio programs as Luisa Potenza's "Italia Mia" on WALK-AM.  Many of the people spoke of how it was the "music to make sauce" by.

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Mark Rotella never mentioned Lidia Bastianich, but one of her great concepts hovered about his discussion.

First off, food is something which is always part of the Italian psyche, but Lidia differentiates between food that is Italian and food that is Italian-American.  Both genres will start off with the same basic ingredients but may add what is readily available in their different regions. 

For example, snails may be easy to obtain in certain parts of Italy but almost impossible to find for Italian-American cooks in, say, Oklahoma.  Other components may be used instead, and the end results usually turn out to be different but equally tantalizing.

This basic idea may be applied to Italian music vs. Italian-American music.  For his book, Rotella interviewed many singers and they kept going back to the one basic influence of their singing: opera.  A number of these performers credited the great tenor Enrico Caruso with being their greatest influence.

"It was his style of singing with open vowels and pouring great emotion into his performance that was taken by the Italian-American singers and popularized," Rotella said. "Like Caruso, these singers 'wore their hearts on their sleeves' in a real operatic manner." 

Although Sinatra, Bennett, Damone and Martin lacked the power of operatically trained voices, they took the true Italian approach to their craft, placing it front of orchestral arrangements created by Americans and recorded it in studios that had the state-of-the-art equipment of its time. The end result was a type of music that was certainly different from what was being heard on stage at La Scala, but was as tantalizing as the kinds of foods Lidia often talks about.

The Celebration of Our Italian Heritage continues at the Sachem Library, with a performance of Michelangelo's poetry set to music at 7 p.m. on Oct. 12.

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