I have to admit, it wasn't easy for me to come up with music to perform for this week's theme, storyteller. Although many songs beautifully represent the theme, they don't sound well on the piano without the lyrics. I had one idea, Hijo de la luna, a song by the Spanish band Mecano, as it sounds very well for the piano solo and it has a great story behind it. However, that song appeared on stage twice this week already. So I was searching for other music.
When I was a small child, I loved listening to the stories my great-grandmother was was tellingelling me from her childhood and childhood and life. It was interesting to listen to the adventures she had with her siblings and family, and life in general many, many years ago. On the other hand, I didn't really like the fairy tales from the books. They didn’t appeal to me and they were also a bit scary. I was more interested in those real-life stories told by the family. But as we were growing up, we read more and more interesting books, and in one one year we had as a homework from the school to read the tragedy Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. At the time, we thought it was just one in a series of love stories. A bit unreal and exaggerated story at first sight.
However, it is based on a real-life story, that dates back to the beginning of the 14th century of two lovers who lived in Italy, in the town of Verona. Wiliam Shakespeare found this story in a poem wrote by Arthur Brooke and adapted it. This tragedy became a masterpiece and inspired others to make music based on it. For example, Prokofiev wrote the music for the ballet Romeo and Juliet. Nino Rota wrote the soundtrack for the same-named movie in 1969 and this is the piece I have chosenn to play. I interpret the song Love theme from Romeo and Juliet, in the arrangement of Henry Mancini.
I have visited Verona in Italy and the famous balcony of Juliet that is used as a touristic spot now. There is also a statue of her, and I had photos from the place but as it was long time ago, they are old and bad quility. Hence the cover photo is from pixabay but represents that balcony of Jullie I have visited in my school dayst I have visited in my school days.