Verdi

L’invenzione del Vero

Verdi. L’invenzione del Vero is a film made by Piccola officina di videostoria, on the occasion of the bicentenary of Verdi’s birth, with the collaboration of Teche Rai and under the High Patronage of the President of the Republic, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, the Committee for the Celebration of Giuseppe Verdi’s Birth, and the Committee for Anniversaries of National Interest.

Each chapter of the film is a suggestion experienced following a thread that links Verdi’s music to the future that he, without having seen it, was able to narrate: the great events in Italian and world history; the personal, civil and political passions that have made humanity and many women and men bearers of universal feelings and meanings.

On the notes of “La Traviata”, in the first episode, Marylin Monroe and Maria Callas glide along with young people of the 1990s. In the second, with God’s guidance in Don Carlo’s soul, there is the compassion of dying together: John and Robert Kennedy on one side of the Ocean, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino on the other. O Terra, Addio from “Aida” and self-sacrifice with the faces of Aldo Moro; Guido Rossa; Che Guevara; Mahatma Ghandi. Victims and heroes. “Nabucco” with its most famous chorus, that Va Pensiero which everywhere evokes the strength and the victory of thought over oppression: the Jewish people, Mandela, Rosa Parks; Rita Levi Montalcini. With the Vergine degli Angeli from “La Forza del destino” Verdi shows pain: the Titanic, war, natural catastrophes: the great containers of pain and despair. The triumphal March from “Aida” celebrates the victory of many: Tardelli’s shout in the World Cup final; Martin Luther King’s march; the fall of the Berlin Wall. Regained dignity and life beneath the rubble flow on the notes of O Signor che del tetto natio from “I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata”. In spite of Sebreniza, in spite of massacres like the one at Bologna station, in spite of everything. School and teachings flow on, to the notes of Come in quest’ora bruma from “Simon Boccanegra”. Rigoletto’s Bella Figlia dell’Amore concludes each episode and the entire reel, because in these 200 years Verdi has narrated, imagined, sometimes even brought to life, the joy of being part, in his case no small part, of a universal humanity.

The music is taken from the official website of the project created by the Emilia-Romagna Region for the anniversary celebrations, Verdi 200 Emilia-Romagna, courtesy of Ibc, the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Province of Parma.
The images are mounted on a square screen divided into four windows, dialoguing with each other through allusions, associations, and assonances, and playing on the invention of a Verdi who, like Marylin Monroe and Andy Warhol’s Mao, reproduces and paints himself, inventing a Verdi who foresaw tomorrow.
The video, produced in the form of a reel (i.e., a film that can be started at any time and repeated over and over again) was conceived to decorate the squares and any public meeting place with images and music on the night dedicated to Verdi between 9 and 10 October 2013, and was donated to all the municipalities, communities, diplomatic representations and cultural institutions, schools and internal business circuits that requested it.