Giacomo Orefice was a leading figure in the Italian music scene of the early twentieth century: literary, humanist and great teacher (among his composition students at the Milan Conservatory were Nino Rota and Victor De Sabata), treated almost all forms of music, also being a great popularizer of musical culture. He died at 57 of a violent septicemia in the prime of his creative activity. As for most of his famous contemporaries in the “Eighties Generation”, also his activity can be considered in the sign of a sacred respect for the Italic art, right at a time when foreign currents seemed to submerge it. At a conference on Italian music at the Sorbonne in Paris, Alfredo Casella introduced him as one of the precursors of the new school developing in Italy, both for his great symphonic/theatrical compositions and for his chamber and piano music. On this CD tenor Giuseppe Veneziano and pianist Adriano Bassi are offering to us a collection of chamber music arias from the eclectic maestro that, using texts from great poets including Nievo, Carducci and D’Annunzio, effectively manages to create sensations and atmospheres of great expressive variety.