DE SONO – Association for Music – Opening concert of the season
Programme
- Italian Resistance songs arranged by Andrea Ravizza, intertwined with readings from The Partisan Johnny by Beppe Fenoglio
- Luciano Berio – Folk Songs
Part of the series Note libere, organized by the City of Turin on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Liberation.
There is a passage in Johnny the Partisan (1968) that inspired the dramaturgy of this show: the nocturnal encounter between the protagonist and a young fascist during the most intense months of the Resistance. On one side stands the combative Johnny, steeped in his liberal ideals; on the other, a somewhat dreamy-looking soldier identified by the "scoundrelly uniform of the Legion." It would be the perfect moment for an ambush favored by the darkness; yet Johnny cannot pull the trigger, sensing an insuperable "sentimental interdiction." These are his words to justify an almost surreal scene, where hatred vanishes for a moment behind the gaze of the duellists. It is the instant when fighters remember they are just boys: who knows, perhaps they grew up in the same environment and, if they weren't forced to fight for things so much greater than themselves, they might be at a tavern sharing a beer. Throughout the novel, there are many moments where the characters' humanity prevails over the celebration of socio-political ideals. In the midst of an exhilarating war for Freedom, fought in extreme conditions with often makeshift means, Johnny the Partisan reveals flashes of poignant humanity. These moments remind us how much we owe to those very young men who gave Italians a precious gift, with a boldness that often bordered on recklessness. Our dramaturgy, therefore, chose to focus specifically on these vortices of intimate—at times even childlike—emotion, seeking resonances within the extensive repertoire of Resistance songs. Touching correspondences emerged, systematically reminding us how our fathers—those heroes who fought for Liberty—are, in the end, also our children, with all their weaknesses and fragilities.
When Johnny leaves his parents, he writes a letter to his mother, imagining her desperate on the "dreary hill" while reading what might be the last memory of her boy; in words, he celebrates his Herculean heroism, but behind them, one senses the same childlike pain that resonates in the "Addio mammina" (Goodbye, Mommy) that opens the song of the same name.
Similarly, during harsh marches through the snow, amidst memories of comrades fallen in battle, the memory of family takes shape once again—in the novel as in the song—of a weeping mother watching the mountain peaks scattered with commemorative crosses (Cime nevose). One cannot overlook the musical assonances that allow the most famous melodies of the Resistance to filter through Fenoglio’s lines: Fischia il vento (The Wind Whistles), above all, described as "a true weapon against the fascists." But most importantly, there is the perennial sense of nostalgia that Johnny allows to leak out during long days of isolation, when cohesion seems to be only an immaterial value. This is the same sense of deeply human doubt that emerges in a song like Tutti quei monti che io cavalcai (All those mountains I rode), where the dreamy recollection of past adventures mingles with the harsh reality of the present moment.
The proposed selection seeks precisely to highlight these correspondences between literature and music: on one hand, an anthology of passages revealing the profound humanity of Johnny and his comrades; on the other, a series of songs—sometimes reworked with narrative and cinematic depth, sometimes merely hinted at by an isolated timbre—in the arrangements by Andrea Ravizza.
Andrea Malvano (from the De Sono event program)
Performers
Rossella Giacchero – voice
Alberto Barbi – spoken voice
Niccolò Susanna – flute
Andrea Albano – clarinet
Martina Anselmo – viola
Viola Sommariva – cello
Federica Mancini – harp
Lorenzo Guidolin – percussion
Luca Favaro – percussion
Davide Trolton – conductor