In setting my goals and scheduling I had allowed some time at the start of the project to complete some research into the conventions of the genre to make sure I got the style right for the Aria. I paid a visit to a wonderful music store I love behind Carnegie Hall in New York to pick up a few Orchestral Scores of pieces from the greats like Verdi and Puccini. Now there was no way that I was going to be able to produce anything like as good as these masters. I had 8 weeks and had never written an Opera piece in my life. I could have had 8 years and still not written anything a tenth as good as these but you have to start somewhere. So for one week I poured over these classic scores, absorbing the orchestration, the harmony, the melodic choices and range of the vocalists.

After a week I had a pretty good idea which classsic elements of the genre I wanted to include and had started to form the melody and harmony. The next week involved getting a basic structure down at the piano, working out the rough shape of the tune and the underlying harmony. At this point I had no lyrics so I must have driven my neighbours mad in New York, singing nonsencial phrases in Italian just to see how the melody might work with words.

Once the basic building blocks were done it was time to start on the words. As I don't speak a word of Italian I figured the best thing to do was  to write the words in English myself, then use an online translator to get a rough translation to make sure they were going to fit in Italian and then finally to get an Italian translator at the final stage to make sure that the exact grammar was correct.

I wanted the words to repflect not only how I felt about my father but also the thoughts of my brother David so I brought him up to speed on the project and together we began brainstorming possible ideas. Luckily my father has provided us with plenty of inspiration over the years when it comes to writing about the massive influence he has had on our lives. In fact the hardest part was paring it down to only 3 minutes for the song. A few days later and we had it. A set of lyrics that we felt best expressed our thanks to a father who had shaped us as men.

I now had a set of lyrics that worked in English and were translated into my worst pigeon Italian. I needed some help and I was lucky enough to be able to call on my friend Tanya Blumstein to assist with the translation of the lyrics. I met Tanya many years ago at the Cannes film festival and we've been friends ever since. Amongst her many talents Tanya is a gifted linguist, often dialect coaching Hollywood actors  in films such as King Kong. However in this instance it was her ability to speak Italian that would help me out enormously. I called her at home in Paris and explained what I was trying to do. Being the superstar she is, she immediately offered to help and  gave up a lot of her time helping to correct the grammar which given thatI had mainly translated my lyrics using Google, needed a lot of help!

Nonetheless we ended up with a set of lyrics that worked in English, made sense in Italian and worked melodically and rythmically which was going to be crucial when it came to singing them. We also now had a title, "Grazie Il Mio Padre", or in English "Thank you my father". Here are the lyrics below in Italian, to continue reading about the next stage of the project and see a translation into English read on to Part 3