Il Sibilo

” Donata D’Annunzio Lombardi joins Focile in a duet by Federico Ricci, Luigi’s brother, La solita conversazione degli amanti, which is one of seven items added to the main sequence. It’s a jolly little tune, the text of which is more or less just ‘ Love me? Love me not?’. D’Annunzio Lombardi sings two contrasting Donizetti songs, Sovra il remo, in which a sailor sings of the fate of his drowned love, and Se a te d’intorno, a song to the breeze, hoping that it will reach the heart of the lover. These tiny songs, with their ‘ sheer harmonic and melodic invention’ (as Jeremy Commons notes), have an intensity that is quite surprising. “

Patrick O’Connor da Gramophone