The videos he posts on his Facebook page show his Rome, the one from Trastevere. They show his home, his personal refuge. And they show the affection the fans have for the most Roman of singers: Antonello Venditti has a chat with Tuttoitalia.
Antonello, you've become active on social media: is it a way to keep the affection you always receive at your live shows?
Yes, but I have been for a long time, I like it, I enjoy posting my life. I have been using Facebook as my personal diary for several years now and I have Instagram for the more official messages. I love this kind of relationship, my audience are my friends, I welcome them into my life, into my home with intimacy. I do improvised live streams that are captured in the moment with spontaneity and sharing.
You've been singing “Ci vorrebbe un amico” since '85, and on this tour of yours you're bringing and meeting many friends, aren't you?
In truth, the friends are both on stage, like my colleagues, and below the stage, taking part in the concert. They are people who follow me and who are my age, but I always think of them as youngsters. This tour has been a success, the project started in Verona but continued with various other dates and now abroad as well, and I am overjoyed.
I've brought people my age back to concerts. For those of my generation, music stopped in the eighties: we had lost the seventy-year-olds at shows, whereas I have won them back. What's more, I've always had a younger audience, so now the concerts are becoming intergenerational, and it's wonderful.
You have told Rome's story in many ways, while some artists instead speak with nostalgia of a Rome that no longer exists (as Carlo Verdone did last September in his interview with Tuttoitalia). Can you confirm that “there is still a heart beating in the heart of Rome”?
Carlo is a melancholic, like all great comedians! But the heart, I assure you, is always there. Rome is eternal, like its problems. But its problems are in the eyes of those who look at it. Today there is a wonderful sun; you only have to look out and see the beauty. Rome is the reflection of those who live it; it emphasises the sadness but also the joy. Rome's problem is that it ought to be better cared for. After all, we have always had potholes. My songs are the essence of Rome as an idea of universal beauty but also as unease. “Roma capoccia”… yes, but “Del mondo infame”… there is always a clash, injustices in Rome are more unjust, the potholes deeper, everything is emphasised, do you understand?
How, on the other hand, would you explain to an eighteen-year-old the journey that you and De Gregori recounted in “Bomba o non Bomba?”?
I think there is little to explain. I would like them to learn about that historical period, but without any claim to teach anything. You see, the beauty of my language is that you can view it superficially but also analyse it and discover different meanings, and that is why it is always current. People think there is an answer in music, whereas songs must teach us to ask questions, to create doubts, continual doubts. Take “Notte prima degli esami”: every verse is a film, it deserves to be imagined, and the strength of music is that it can be enjoyed and adapted by everyone. Then perhaps during the concert in Zurich I can tell who the protagonists of this song are and how we experienced it at that time…
Regarding the importance of your language, you have received numerous awards for your poetics…
They even made me an Accademico del Belli, but I always gave it little weight; I was happy about it, but I never loved trophies. My mother had displayed them, she was proud of them. The importance, then, of certain poetic verses you refer to changes according to the times you live in, and who knows how many more we will hear… what interests me is the future; the past I already know. In every period of apparent confusion, like the one we are living through, I like to think that moments of great creativity are born. You have to have the right eyes, semantics is fundamental, and I feel good in these times!
Certainly, during the concert in Zurich, we will sing his songs, making them a little more our own, and we will all love his Rome a little.
Antonello Venditti
Sunday 3 April 2022, 8.00 pm
Theater 11, Zurich
Buy tickets
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
