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Artist
Tito Schipa Jr.
12+ albums
Progressive rockrockProgressivecomposerItaly
about
The son of the popular tenor Tito Schipa, the young Tito Jr. started his career in 1967 with a show based on Bob Dylan's songs, arranged like a sort of rock opera. Fascinated by this formula he repeated it many times in his later works. His recording debut came in 1971 for Fonit Cetra, with the single Sono passati i giorni, but his first proper work was the ambitious opera Orfeo 9, that he had concentrated on since 1969, and that was first represented in theatre in Rome in 1970. A TV film also came in 1973, and the double album was one of the first examples of pop operas in Italy. Influenced by classical music, Schipa released a beautiful work that can be hardly described as a proper rock album, but surely falls into the progressive music field. Orfeo 9 included among the others, the first record appearance by two Italian artists soon to become very popular, Renato Zero and Loredana Bertè, but many important musicians are listed in the cast, including Brainticket's leader Joel Vandroogenbroeck and drummer Tullio De Piscopo. The rock opera style can be boring to some listeners, with multivocal parts and orchestral arrangements, but the album is an interesting early example of this kind. Second album came in 1974, this time much in a singer-songwriter style, and Io ed io solo was much less successful than its predecessor. The pop opera format was again used in 1978, for a reworking of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, re-titled Er Dompasquale, later released as a 3-LP box set. The
