So found the Lucia-song the road from Naples to Norway

For a number of years ago, I had a concert in Odessa, the Ukrainian port on the Black sea that was founded by Catherine the great in 1794. The city's concert hall was inaugurated in 1899, and the orchestra keeps astounding high quality. In the 1800s be able to Odessa in memory of New York city. Ethnic groups from all over the world lived fairly peacefully together in a strong regional hub. The culture also had good terms with speech in a variety of languages. Since, it was worse.

the City's main tourist attraction is the Potemkin-stairs . Director Sergey Eisenstein filmed in 1925 a massacre of the Russian uprising in 1905 so effective that filmhistorien had never seen before. Definitely a pain place. Odessa-the opera house close by is famous for its unique architecture and awesome acoustics. A picture of the Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) hanging on a wall in the foyer, the legendary tenor gave a concert here a long time ago. Caruso, was from Naples and established himself as the world's best tenor with a variety of performances at The Met and Covent Garden. Recording of music on the disc was a new business, and Caruso played in more than 250 releases.

In a city next to the opera in Odessa was several recordings with Enrico Caruso on display in the window. One of these was the "Santa Lucia" with the text and music of the neapolitan composer and author Teodoro Cottrau (1827-1879). The melody is based on a local folk melodies, while the text rates the district "Santa Lucia" in Naples. When Caruso recorded the song on the disc, it was known all over the world. Bing Crosby performing "Santa Lucia" in a medley from the album "101 Gang Songs" from 1961, while Elvis Presley did his own version on the album "Elvis for Everyone!" (1965) and in the film "Viva Las Vegas".

Neapolitan folk melodies is often energetic and beautiful, "O Sole Mio" and "Funiculi Funicula" are examples. The Swedish embedsmannen, a ... and composer Gunnar Wennerberg visited Italy in 1850 and got to hear "Santa Lucia" in Italian. The experience was strong, and he spoke warmly about the melody to colleagues at home in Stockholm. When the historic and religious Lucia-celebration in the 1900s was the growing popularity in Sweden, there was a need for a song, in Swedish, be able to convey the legend of the little kitchen girl who was martyred in Sicily in the 300's. Version to Arvid Rosén (1895-1973) called "the Night goes tongue fjät, run gård och stuva" came out in 1928 and is the basis for our Norwegian variant. The tune is the same as the Cottrau published in 1849 with the title "Santa Lucia".

There are many roads that must be crossed when Lucia-the celebration now stands for the door. When children will themselves white robes with Lucia in the middle with a crown of candles on her head, mixing elements from vintersolhverv, preparations for christmas, old norse customs and the celebration of a sicilian martyr. A folk melodies from Naples, which originally had a different purpose, creating a strong musical frame around it all. Such brytinger our culture is full of. My acquaintances in the Odessa philharmonic orchestra to show up in the town's catholic church every year on the 13.December to sort thoughts about life and death. Just that there are many in Ukraine who are struggling with currently.