Sarah Brightman

La Luna

Below follows the track list of the CD as it was released at the end of April 2000 in must European countries (not in the U.K.); see further down about other versions. Also given is some info on the Moon and the CD-booklet as well as personal comments on the CD.

THIS LOVE (6:19)
music & lyrics: Armstrong / Burns
SCARBOROUGH FAIR (4:10)
music & lyrics: traditional, adapted by Peterson
FIGLIO PERDUTO (4:36)
music: Beethoven
lyrics: Ferraù, adapted by Soltau
LA CALIFFA (3:05)
music: Morricone
lyrics: Bevilacqua
HERE WITH ME (5:12)
music & lyrics: Armstrong / Stratham / Gabriel
SERENADE (instrumental) (0:50)
music: Peterson / Soltau
HOW FARE THIS SPOT (2:07)
music: Rachmaninov
lyrics: G. Galina
HIJO DE LA LUNA (4:27)
music & lyrics: Cano
SHE DOESN'T SEE HIM (4:26)
music & lyrics: Goldman / Romanelli
English lyrics: Read / Ingebrigsten / Marazzi / Adams
SOLO CON TE (3:04)
music: Händel, adapted by Peterson / Brightman
lyrics: Ferraù
GLOOMY SUNDAY (3:45)
music: Seress
lyrics: Javor / Lewis
LA LUNA (4:58)
music: Dvorak, adapted by Peterson
lyrics: Ferraù
FIRST OF MAY (live version) (3:03) *)
music & lyrics: B / R / M Gibb

*) This song is called "Encore Track" on the CD box and is not numbered.

[Total playing time: 50:23]

The European CD I have was released by Eastwest Records GmbH (A Warner Music Group Company) (no. 8573-82883-2) at the end April 2000.

All lyrics are printed in the booklet, except for those of the last (encore) track, but I already had those lyrics. And I am very pleased that also a translation is given for songs 3, 8, 10 and 12; the translation of song 8, however, was not very good, so I have improved that one. Songs 4 and 7 have been translated also now; the first may still need some improvement.
===> All lyrics on a single page (17.0 kb)
===> All lyrics and translations on a single page (23.1 kb)

JPEG version of cover (17.7 kb) GIF version of cover (47.9 kb)

"La Luna" tour
There was a "La Luna" world tour by Sarah in the autumn of 2000 and Spring of 2001 which brought her to many cities in the world. I saw the concert in Rotterdam on 3 December 2000; follow the latter link for a "review" and the concert programme.

Non-European version of La Luna
: The above version of La Luna was released in most European countries (but strangely enough not in the U.K. ...) in April 2000.
In countries outside Europe La Luna is released in August 2000 in a different version, with three tracks not on the European version (and without First of May); in Singapore it was available early August, in the USA/Canada the release date is 29 August. And the Japanese version has yet another extra song ....; ===> page about the non-European versions

Sigh ... here we go again.
Just as with Sarah's previous CD Eden two (or more?) versions are released and the fans outside Europe get extra songs. Why do they do that???
The CD is released here by another record company then outside Europe (again like Eden) and these companies have different policies, perhaps. Or the release in Europe was done far too hastily, who knows.

The December 2000 letter of the Fan Club reports:

Across Europe, La Luna album will be re-launched in a special slip case. The album contains three more tracks and is identical with the U.S.-version.

Which means that the fans who bought the European release of April 2000 are forced to buy the new CD too, if they have not bought the non-European version yet, as I did .... (I do not think the record company is willing to give a refund of the April 2000 version.)
Let us hope that they, the record companies, do not pull that trick on us again in the future !!
This new version, by the way, is now also released in the U.K. And it has a cover different from the April and August 2000 versions; see the page on the non-European version for more details.

: Let us also have a look at the moon herself: (jpeg; 45kb); The large dark more or less circular region below the centre of this picture is the Mare Crisium ("Sea of Crises"). Left of it are Mare Marginis ("Sea of the Edge") and above that Mare Smythii (named after a British astronomer), both are as seen from Earth at the very eastern limb of the moon and partly invisible; everyting left of that is always invisible from the Earth. The dark irregular area above Mare Crisium is Mare Fecunditas ("Sea of Fertility", on the sterile moon!?) and to the right of that are the Mare Tranquillitatis ("Sea of Tranquility", where Apollo 11 landed) and Mare Serenitas ("Sea of Serenity").

The CD-booklet is printed on high quality, glossy paper. It contains several beautiful pictures of Sarah in strange, somewhat mysterious garments, in different landscapes and a magnificent seascape. The lyrics are printed on top of the picture of some ground with stones -- evidently meant to represent the surface of the moon; see as an example the scanned Russian lyrics of song 7 (27.1 kb) (the diagonal lines on the image are a result from the scanning; it's the speckles I mean).
The CD-disc itself shows a picture of moon, taken from a different angle than the above picture and mirrored (as if looking at the picture from the backside of the paper); judging from other pictures of the moon I have and saw at Web site (see e.g. this page), the above one is the correct view.

Remember though: "The moon is a harsh mistress"

Comments

Like Sarah's previous CD Eden, La Luna is a combination of songs in different styles: some are opera-like (the non-English ones), others are more popular (though not too pop-like). And again this combination of styles works out beautifully! Maybe even more so than on Eden, which has a few songs that I found not so fitting ("Eden" itself, for instance).

As for the songs on La Luna, I think Sarah's rendition of Scarborough Fair is simply wonderful and Gloomy Sunday is very beautiful, a little jazzy. Of the opera-songs I like Figlio Perduto, which has a strange, somewhat mysterious mood, and Hijo De La Luna most. Also the Russian song How fare this spot sounds wonderful. The last song, First Of May, is a live recording, but that does not conflict with the rest of the CD, I think, and it is great to have this beautiful song on CD too.

Clearly, La Luna is a collection of songs with no overall concept as someone wrote in comment to me. This is of course also the case for Sarah's previous CDs Eden (1998) and the more opera-like Timeless / Time to say goodbye (1997). The difference in the styles of the songs has become bigger in time, but I do not at all consider that a negative point: as mentioned I think it has turned out very well on La Luna.
For the CD Eden two dozen tracks were recorded but only fifteen ended up on that CD, as mentioned in the comments on the Eden page. Perhaps some of those left-over songs ended up on La Luna? According to the CD-booklet of La Luna the songs were recorded in 1999/2000, i.e. well after the release of Eden, but two of the five studios used are the same for both CDs.

All in all I think La Luna is a very good and balanced CD: I love it.
Yet, if I may be honest, I keep returning to The Songs That Got Away and Surrender as my favourite CDs: that is how I prefer to hear Sarah.

As mentioned above, La Luna is released in Europe in April 2000 and elsewhere in August 2000. As with Eden this lead to two (and even more) different versions of the CD, where the European fans again miss out on some tracks.

===> Additional comments on the non-European version

Thanks to Jörg Kubitza and Walter H. Padilla Ramírez for info and help for this page before I had the CD myself. And to Mike, Sara Whalen, Loo Jiaming for various bits of info.

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