Digitmovies is glad to release in the SP series a big film music rarity: for the very first time on CD the OST in full stereo by Stelvio Cipriani for the movie ''Il venditore di palloncini'' (aka ''Last Moments'') directed in 1974 by Mario Gariazzo and starring Renato Cestié, Marina Malfatti, James Whitmore, Cyril Cusack, Lee J. Cobb, Adolfo Celi, Gianni Agus, Maurizio Arena, Lina Volonghi, Giacomo Furia, Franco Pesce, Carlo Romano, Umberto D'Orsi, Silvano Tranquilli, Sven Valsecchi, Sandra Mantegna, Gabriella Andreini, Giustino Durano, Lorenzo Piani, Andrea Scotti, Alfredo Adami, Vittorio Fanfoni, Luciano Bonanni. This film is part of the "tear movies" genre, where the protagonist was always a child who died at the end of the film thereby causing an effect of weeping in the cinema-going public. On a double CD set (CDDDM 142) Digitmovies has already released the complete music scores in full stereo by Franco Micalizzi from the most well-known motion pictures of this series: ''L'ultima neve di primavera'', ''Bianchi cavalli d'agosto'' and ''L'albero dalle foglie rosa'', all of them starring Renato Cestiè. The story deals with Giacomino (Cestiè), the son of a variety show dancer (Malfatti) who abandoned him and his father when she left with her lover. Over the years, the boy has to deal with his father and he devotes himself to a puppet show for a living. Stricken with a severe form of anemia, he will be hospitalized, but before dying his mother and also a mysterious "balloon salesman" (Cusack) will come to visit him. At that time only a 45 rpm single (PDU PA 1100) was issued with two stereo tracks (here Tr.15 Tr.16): the main theme in the orchestral version with a pop arrangement and "Ave Maria" performed by the voice of 14 year old Robert Danna. This OST which has been very much requested by fans of Maestro Cipriani to be issued on CD is only possible thanks to the composer himself who gave us the only existing copy of the stereo master tape kept in his private archives. Unfortunately, over more than 30 years the sound quality of the source has deteriorated and although we intervened with appropriate sound restoration techniques, it was not possible to remove some anomalies. Without this miraculous recovery, this CD project with a total time of 37 minutes would not have been possible. Stelvio Cipriani has written two main themes: one with a popular flavor varied with different instruments (harpsichord, piano, oboe, etc.) to describe the Circus and amusement park world (Tr. 1, Tr.5, Tr.8, Tr.10 , Tr.14), the other very sweet and nostalgic for the child (Tr. 3, Tr.6, Tr.25, Tr.13), also reprised with typical Stelvio Cipriani police movie sounds (Tr.9). The author has also been able to easily describe the Circus world by writing appropriate music themes (Tr.2, Tr.4, Tr, 7, Tr.12). A proper rescue and preservation of the Italian Silver Age and of the musical art of the legendary Stelvio Cipriani. |
