Italian alt-metal band Violet Blend have dropped their cover of Giuseppe Verdi's "La Donna Mobile" today.

The song, which is featured in Verdi’s 1851 opera Rigoletto, was brought into the spotlight when opera singer Maurizio Marchini performed the song from their balcony during the start of lockdown. For its accompanying music video, which was filmed at Teatro Verdi in Firenze, Italy, Violet Blend enlisted the help of Maestra Gianna Fratta.

Vocalist Giada Celeste Chelli said this about the cover:

"As a classical musicologist, I've always had to study and deal with music written by men, where women were always secondary characters with little to think or say. La Donna è Mobile is one of the most famous arias of 19th century Italian opera, but I realized that very few people really knew its meaning. It is misogynist and discriminatory, and even if it was written during the 19th century, I find it terribly current. We wanted to underline the importance and relevance of a reflection on the role of women, focusing on the world of work, where still today there is a dangerous and frightening gender gap. With this project, we wanted to gather and show the public the testimonies of these wonderful women that work and succeed in professions that are socially still linked only to men. We asked women to help us spread a message of gender equality and the women responded!"

The cover is featured on Violet Blend’s new studio album Demons, which is out right now on Eclipse Records. It’s also the theme song for the ongoing project La Donna Mobile - Campaign against gender discrimination and violence, which promote equality, empowerment, education and information, focused on the role of women in the world of work. More information can be found here.

On April 16, the band will have an album release show inside the Viper Theatre in Firenze, Italy with support from AIDOS, Old Bridge, and Worldplan.