Milano: Neri Marcorè in “La Buona Novella” at the Carcano Theater
From the 18 23 2023 April
Milano: Neri Marcorè in “La Buona Novella” at the Carcano Theater.
Blacks Marcorè comes back to deal with Fabrizio De Andrè in a new theater show song that brings to life on stage “The Good News”, album published by the author in 1969.
After the success of What I Don't Have, Marcorè is the playwright and director Giorgio Gallione renew their artistic partnership in the name of the great Genoese singer-songwriter by bringing his first concept album to the stage. Explicitly theatrical in nature, “La Buona Novella” is constructed almost in the form of a chamber opera with score and text composed to give voice to many characters: Mary, Joseph, Tito the thief, the chorus of mothers, a carpenter, the people. And it is precisely from this basis that the theatrical version starts.
«This show is conceived as a sort of contemporary Sacred Representation which alternates and interweaves de André's songs with narrative passages taken from the apocryphal Gospels which the author himself was inspired by: from the Protoevangelium of James to the Armenian Infancy Gospel or fragments of the Pseudo-Matthew. Prose and music are assembled into a score consistent with the path traced by the author in the album. The spoken songs, as in an archaic tale, underline the evocative strength and value of the original songs, revealing their mythical and literary source" writes Gallione. «The “revolutionary” value of De André's rewriting lies in the decision of a layman to tackle such an anomalous topic for these times».
«I believe the task of an artist is to comment on the events of his time but using the tools of art: allegory, metaphor, comparison».
This statement by De André is emblematic of how the author has positioned himself, in times of full student revolt, towards such a delicate and debated topic from a political and spiritual point of view.
The dramaturgy added by Gallione, acted largely by Marcorè, tells the background of Mary's childhood, revealing her 'miraculous' birth and fills the void that goes from Christ's childhood to the Crucifixion. «A dramaturgical elaboration that in some way completes De André's story, transforming “La Buona Novella” not only into a concert, but into an original show, acted, performed and sung by a company of actors, singers and musicians who think De André's work as a very rich heritage which can however resist, like any masterpiece, even the absence of the incomparable interpretation of its creator" states the author and director of this new show.
(…) Why re-propose The Good News? Because, for the times in which it was written, it was a revolutionary speech, in my opinion. And this for two reasons: I took inspiration from the Armenian, Arab, Byzantine Apocryphal Evangelists, in any case men, writers not belonging to the confession of Christ, in short, not his press office. The result was a desacralization of the Gospel characters, to the advantage, I believe, of their greater humanization. But when I wrote La Buona Novella (1969) we were in full student revolt and to the less attentive, i.e. the majority of users of popular music, the record appeared anachronistic. But what was Jesus of Nazareth preaching if not the abolition of social classes, of authoritarianism, in the name of universal egalitarianism and brotherhood? It's a bit as if I had turned to my peers who were fighting against enormous abuses of power and authority and had said to them: Look, a great revolutionary has already supported the same type of struggle 1969 years ago and we all know how it ended. Because, in my opinion (then and now) the fight against authority, power and its abuses must be fought individually every day: of course, there are exceptional moments and cases in which it is better to fight together, but this whole must be a sum of individualities, not a herd of sheep that fights in the dome of an abstract ideology and that has the objective of replacing, through the imposition of its dogmas, the same power it fights against, in logic of "get your ass off and I'll take it." Now I believe the task of an artist is also to comment on the events of his time but using the tools of art: allegory, metaphor, comparison. Observing the student struggle and its demands, the right and sensible ones, I spoke of another struggle supported by a man 2000 years before who had similar objectives. (…) The good news, in my opinion, was an album then, an absolutely modern discourse and in some respects it still is today."
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