A melancholic mania, or Dowland according to Sting...

From the ovation that accompanies Sting's entrance, it's immediately clear that the audience isn't exactly the same one that regularly frequents the Sala S. Cecilia at Rome's Parco della Musica.

Curiously and inexplicably, there's no program; with a prelude of two pieces, the first by Bach, Edin Karamazov proves that the archlute, or long-necked lute, is an instrument capable of infinite expressive nuances. Sting greets the audience in Italian, but then returns to his native tongue both for the brief and effective portrait of the composer and for the excerpts from a 1595 letter addressed by Dowland to Queen Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, which, as on the album, are read between songs. Unexpectedly, a choir of four male and four female voices, an English vocal ensemble called Stile Antico, appears and sings on some songs. This music was originally printed so that it could be performed by a single voice accompanied by a lute or by four voices (on the right-hand page, the tenor, bass, and altus parts were each arranged on three sides, so they could be read by the singers around a table).

The result is compelling, and Dowland's music reveals all its composed intensity, which Sting's natural voice helps illuminate, even if in the lower register its polish fades and loses its musicality. At the encore, a small surprise arrives, greeted with great enthusiasm by the audience: two songs, one from his solo repertoire and the other from The Police, are reinterpreted with the accompaniment of the two archlutes. The tour continues tonight in Milan - there was a stop in Florence before Rome - and then in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria.

(c) Il Giornale Della Musica by Paolo Scarnecchia