Venue: Hala Tivoli Ljubljana
Concert date: 11.05.2007
Attendance: 3300
Adelmo Fornaciari, known to everyone as Zucchero. Thirty years of rich career behind him! The guy had his first real taste of success with the band Taxi in the eighties, and he put his huge musical talent on the map with the hit Senza Una Donna / Without A Woman in 1991. He wrote the song together with the legendary Paul Young. He struck gold again just a year later, when he played the big festival dedicated to Freddie Mercury, after which he hit the road on a world tour with Eric Clapton and Elton John. These days you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who has never heard of Zucchero!
That was exactly fifteen years ago, and Zucchero has come back to Ljubljana after three years, this time to Hala Tivoli, to give a jolt to the pulse of Slovenia’s moody, sleepy capital, which is seriously short on proper rock spectacles. In Ljubljana, too, Zucchero served up his standard two-hour set. As expected, the long-bearded rogue in a top hat kicked off the show by playing the first two songs in near-total darkness, sitting on a throne-like chair, strumming his guitar, wrapped in the glow of two modest beams of light. The usual slow build of atmosphere, a tease for the crowd, whose expectations climbed steadily through those opening minutes.
Then suddenly there’s a flash and the stage appears, packed with crystal chandeliers, with Zucchero and his crew in plain view – and the show just bursts into flames! With the whole band going at it! The audience roars a greeting to Zucchero and the rest of his loyal subjects!
The concert was positively boiling with energy. A tight, seasoned approach, confident and in constant control of every single moment! With his fiery passion the guy pushed the temperature in the hall from 23°C at the start to a solid 26°C by the end. On top of that, Zucchero delivered flawless sound perfection! At one point he asked the audience how many people in the hall speak Italian. The response was only half-loud, but Zucchero slyly turned that to his advantage in an instant and, like a true Italian, treated himself to an extra dash of that famous Italian nonchalance. From there on he did his between-song chatter in Italian.
The hall danced and gave itself over to the classics Bacco Perbacco, Baila (Sexy Thing), Menta e Rosmarine, Per Colpa Di Chi, Diamante, Il volo, Diavolo In Me (in the encore), and of course there was no skipping Senza Una Donna / Without A Woman and the tender closer You Are So Beautiful. Two hungry hours of hard-hitting soul and R&B, played without a single slip, shook Hala Tivoli to its core with all that eroticism, rattled its foundations dangerously, and after the show there wasn’t a soul who wasn’t charged up with good vibes and energy, which the “sugary Italian bluesman” brought to our parts once again with his melodies.
