Biografilm 2022

For Battiato, Sicily was above all a feeling of being rooted in what cannot be rooted, a drive

At the cinema on 20, 21 and 22 June, Invitation to travel – Concert for Franco Battiato is the movie that Pepsy Romanoff dedicated to the concert that was held on 21 September at the Verona Arena. In honor of Maestro Battiato.

It was to be a celebration for the forty years since the release of The master’s voicethe most widely and persistently successful album of Franco Battiato, long seller published on September 21, 1981.
It has changed, despite the organizer’s different intentions Francesco Cattiniin a tribute concert, in memory of the singer-songwriter from Catania, who died prematurely in the May preceding the anniversary.
Travel invitationdirected with depth of vision from Pepsy Romanoffis the account – the return to those who were not there, to be understood not in a documentary sense, but in the sign of a high aesthetic – of that event, held at theArena of Verona on 21 September last year, a real convocation of the tutelary deity of the great artist by the many artists who took part in his lesson, who were inspired and entangled in his lesson that was both human and musical, internalizing it to the point of confusing the boundary with learning.

Of these many artists, we will mention only a few in the article, asking the others for forgiveness for what is not forgetfulness, but the impossibility of referring to all the individualities of such a large number. It is also true – and it will be clear to those who will see the film – that it is difficult even to segment the concert, to extrapolate moments from it, as it advances as a flow in which Battiato’s soul seems to be embodied in different voices, each ‘other’ compared to his own. and at the same time adherent, in perfect harmony.

From Sonia Bergamasco to Diodato, through ‘her’ Sicilians: the ‘sublimated’ emotion in poetry of the artists loved by Franco Battiato

In a blown and softly vocalized recitative, with the counterpoint of the superb soprano Cristina Baggio, Sonia Bergamasco intones the opening song that gives the event its name, Travel invitation (from Fleurs1999), and it almost seems to converse with Arisawhich follows it in the order of the lineup in the interpretation of the delicate Like Away, Death – “Go away, death!” -, and the impression is that the death that snatches life on earth has not dug distances, but strengthened the bond with those who have gone, in the full wealth of a legacy that the heirs have not dissipated and will not dissipate.

Later, later Morganintervenes Angelo Branduardiwhich weighs every verse de The king of the world: when, in the almost poematic trend of his song, he reaches the center of the poem (“In white flared clothes echoes of Sufi dances / In the Japanese subways today oxygen machines / The more useless it becomes, the more you believe it’s true / And on the day of the end you won’t need English “), the air seems to move to keep up with words that recall the bare essence of the life experience for which everything we learn ends up impaling us in front of the most radical necessity of unlearning.

Battiato’s women: Alice, Carmen Consoli, Paola Turci

To Alicelinked to Franco Battiato throughout her life by great affection and a profound artistic understanding, is entrusted The curesong-manifesto of universal love that finds its most powerful expression in devotion to the singularity of one who loves himself: he performs it with the unmatched class which has always characterized his songwriting and piano career.

Another woman, Carmen Consolito which Battiato had suggested several times to explore the lower tones of the voice, in a descent into hell of his own expressive possibilities, he had already sung – ‘gravely’ – the contemporary elegy The whole universe obeys love and also later returns to the stage, together with the other Sicilians present: with Giovanni Caccamo, Colapesce, Dimartino, Mario Anvil And Luca Madonia interprets Permanent center of gravityone of the Maestro’s greatest pop hits.

The choice of the song is no coincidence: for Battiato, Sicily was above all a feeling of being rooted in what cannot be rooteda drive – and, therefore, a repetition, something that comes from within and cannot be extinguished – to lose and get lost, to decentralize, almost to disintegrate, a condition of the depth brings it closer to its countrymen, each island among the islands, sucking lonely in the midst of other solitudes.

And if many interpreted songs defy (and graze) the divine mystery – echo the elegantly plaintive voice of Vasco Brondiwhen in Magic Shop mixes Eastern and Western spirituality, mysticism and popular superstition, in the common denominator of a question that questions the enigma (“A lady sells astral bodies / Buddhas go over the bedside tables / I deduce from a sentence of the Gospel / That a Le Corbusier house painter is better“), And the more voluminous one of Diodato in And I come to look for you (“Because I need your presence“) -, Paola Turci he does not forget that remembering Battiato also means underlining the sacredness that in his eyes the political commitment, the participation in the order of civilization: his Poor homeland relaunches the pain that was Battiato in front of debasement of institutions and the predatory greed of its reucci.

After all, those whom Franco loved, replied to the invitation to travel: it is impossible not to grasp their emotion, the silence of their saying reabsorbed by singing, a suspended saying that has become one with the verses of the Maestro. The latter, true protagonists not so much of a memory, but of a story that continues in the life of those who have been able to understand them, even without knowing how to explain them.