From Italy, an Echo of Love in Music for Emily Brontë

From Italy, an Echo of Love in Music for Emily Brontë
by Maddalena De Leo

A very interesting and noteworthy music album is the recent “Echoes of Love” (2024), written, composed and performed by Italian singer-songwriter Maria Olivero, an expert and long standing exponent of Anglo-Saxon folk-rock, which remains largely unknown in Italy today. Drawing on her musical experiences in Scandinavia, Olivero offers ten ballads in English inspired by some of the great female authors of English literature and artists whose common thread is the north wind, which often brings misfortune and rages in winter in various parts of Northern Europe

In particular, track number seven on the album attracts the attention of Brontë fans as it is entitled “Letter to Emily” and dedicated to Emily Brontë. Accompanied mainly by the piano, singer-songwriter Maria Olivero establishes a dialogue with the English writer, timidly confessing the uncertainties and fears that assail her in the darkness of the symbolic moor where she finds herself wandering, gripped by the icy North wind. She is therefore seeking help to move forward in life and overcome its obstacles. The answer is not long in coming, because we recognise in the counterpoint an encouraging, wise and experienced Emily Brontë. Yes, she knows that cold north wind that envelops her rectory in winter: she even depicted it in one of her watercolours depicted it in one of her watercolours and mentioned it twice in her tempestuous novel. However, it was her sister Anne who dedicated an entire poem to it. To the singer-songwriter who so humbly begs her to comfort her, Emily willingly offers her support (“hold on to me”) and her certainties

The main feature of this “Letter to Emily”, already evident in the written text but more accentuated in the sung passage, is the almost obsessive repetition of the verse “love you and I”. It underlines the songwriter's admiration for Brontë, immediately implying its presumed reciprocity.
Thus, the passionate Brontë fan who listens to this evocative song identifies with the repeated “love you and I” to the point of making it his/her own. Four simple words that are thus transformed into a universal declaration of love for the author of Wuthering Heights.

The ballad ‘Letter to Emily’ can be heard at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoRr3ro9qbw