A project
to tell the first 30 years of the Italian Communist Party
The centenary
It was 1921 and the Communist Party of Italy was born at
the San Marco Theater in Livorno, then the Italian Communist Party. The
protagonist of the Italian twentieth century saw in its early years the
commonality of women and men who recognized themselves in it. Today,
at the turn of the century, we have the ambition, together with those who
want to participate with us, to retrace those first steps
by rediscovering those characters, their lives, their
ideas through the staging of a theatrical and musical show .
In the beginning was The Diary of thirty years
1913-1943 of Camilla Ravera a timely, intense and passionate of those difficult years,
it is the story of many men and women who fought, suffered, risked for their
ideals.
Fausto Amodei in 1974 decided to put it to music by
writing a work for six instruments and four voices entitled Il Partito wich in 2016
decided to entrust into the hands of Giovanna Marini who together with the Coro Inni
e Canti di Lotta from the Popular School of Music of Testaccio
directed by Sandra
Cotronei had the idea of staging it in view of
2021, the centenary of the birth of the PCI.
A collective project
The result is a collective work, full of political and
musical stimuli, in which everyone has contributed with their own experience,
their interests, their feelings. Such a generous participation has led to the
formation of working groups dedicated to the study and development of specific
aspects related to the show, from the graphic to the historical one.
It was decided to bring all this ferment to the stage
by creating a multimedia show that represents it.
The pandemic did not take away energy from the
project, in fact, albeit with the inevitable conditioning, the activities of
the groups continued with determination and enthusiasm.
Let's go on stage
The eight solo voices
of the choir are flanked by two choirs, one staged by 12 choir singers Coro DENTRO and the other 23 choir singers at the
edge of the scene Coro FUORI.
The choir was joined by
five instruments, a Piccola orchestra directed by Giulia Accardo , as foreseen by Amodei's
writing.
The constant relationship between Giovanna Marini,
Fausto Amodei and Sandra Cotronei, director of the
choir, also helped to decide changes, arrangements for the peculiar
scenic and melodic construction. In constructing the show,
the musical tradition of the Choir was not
neglected, proceeding with the inclusion of songs from the fighting
tradition; the intent is to create a sort of counterpoint between the
facts narrated in the Diary, by the protagonists of the foundation and the
people with their history, their songs of work and struggle.
A complex show, with multiple voices and multiple
levels of reading that tells an important part of our past
and current history.
The first
performance is scheduled for 21-22 and 23 June 2021 in Rome, at the Vascello
theater. A point of arrival that we look at with optimism aware of
the difficult convergence due to Covid . We will be very vigilant in respecting all the
necessary safety rules for spectators and singers / actors / musicians present
on the stage.
Antonella
Talamonti will take
care of the mise en espace paying
the utmost attention to the distribution in the stage space of the choristers
and musicians in compliance with the rules dictated by the pandemic.
The show will include an
installation curated by Maria Chiara Calvani .
We have the
ambition to think of the appointment at the Vascello Theater as a first stop
on a tour that in the coming years will accompany us to various squares in
Italy and abroad to tell a splendid adventure that is our history.
The CD of the show
This project provides,
in addition to the show, the complete recording of the pieces that compose
it. A double CD will be recorded and produced accompanied by a
booklet / booklet with the lyrics of the songs that make up the cantata and
other writings that tell how the opera was born and how it was
staged.
The CD will be published by NOTA editions -
Almanac of the centenary
Around the music of Fausto Amodei,
the choir Hymns and songs of struggle, for more than thirty years an
active witness to the tradition of work
and struggle songs under the guidance of Giovanna
Marini, has built a project full of meanings.
The desire was born to better investigate those years,
those protagonists. We questioned who and how that change took place,
what was the context in which those ideas developed. So
it was decided to publish an Almanac: the Almanac of the centenary.
The inspiration also originated by rethinking the almanacs
published every year by the PCI around the 1970s. We started from the texts of the work of Fausto Amodei and created a collective work made up of research, exchanges of
information, opinions and emotions to narrate not only
the stories and protagonists of that era but also the cultural and social humus
in which those facts have matured. We have told the life and activity of many people, even those who
have remained almost unknown, especially women, who have sometimes led to
an enormous contribution to the growth and affirmation of the Party by
personally paying. The stories and thoughts of each of us who lived
through the PCI, who loved and hated it, who saw it change and
transform, take part in this narration , a
narrative parallel to the chronicles of the foundation.
A path of
reading what was once the largest communist party in the West.
Editor of L'Ordine Nuovo , the weekly born in 1919 and
directed by Antonio Gramsci , she was one of the founders of
the Communist Party of Italy. In charge of managing the women's
organization of the party, she founded the periodical La Compagna . After Gramsci's arrest, she
found herself practically at the head of the clandestine organization for which
she carried out a prodigious activity also taking part in some congresses of
the Comintern where she got to know both Lenin and
Stalin. The first woman at the top of the party was arrested in 1930 and
sentenced to 15 years in prison and confinement, in Ventotene and Ponza, "for agitation and propaganda
against the regime and reconstitution of the Communist Party".
After the end of
the war, she intensified her militancy with passion and competence: she was
elected to the City Council of Turin, founded the UDI (Union of Italian
Women) , was a deputy in the Chamber for the PCI and then, in 1982,
she was appointed senator for life by President Pertini,
a position that had never before been conferred on a woman.
Her diary,
dedicated to Rosa Bertone, the "guardian" at the women's prison in
Varese where Ravera had been taken after her arrest, who treated and protected
her, risking her job and perhaps even more, is a timely and rigorous but at the
same time intense and passionate story of those difficult years, it is the
story of many men and women who fought, suffered, risked for their ideals.
Turin
singer-songwriter, one of the most representative exponents of the Cantacronache group ,
who wrote memorable political songs including the very famous For the
Dead of Reggio Emilia composed on the occasion of the street clashes
that occurred in 1960 against the Tambroni government,
which became a sung anthem over time in many moments of struggle.
In 1962, after
the experience of the Cantacronache group ,
he became part of the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano , animated among others by Gianni
Bosio and Roberto Leydi , and in this group that had a leading role
in the field of popular music and political song, participated with his voice
and his songs in numerous shows together with Ivan Della Mea , Giovanna Marini , Paolo
Pietrangeli , Gualtiero
Bertelli and many other songwriters who from
then until today, have told the stories, the struggles but above all the
emotions and hopes of those who committed themselves to another possible
world.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fausto_Amodei
Musician, composer, songwriter, researcher and scholar of oral, popular and
political tradition singing who has been teaching for years at the Popular
School of Music in Testaccio , Giovanna
Marini enthusiastically accepted Fausto Amodei's invitation to
stage his opera " THE PARTY ", composed in 1976 and
inspired by Camilla Ravera 's Thirty Years Diary
(1913/1943) . A work conceived and conceived just like a
classical cantata, written in the score for natural voice choir, soloists and
eight instruments.
The SPMT Inni e Canti di Lotta choir , stimulated by the conductor teacher,
decides to re - propose the work in theatrical form and therefore,
together with Sandra Alos Moner Cotronei , decides to take
care of the execution with the idea of giving the work a cut
narrative and theatrical typical of popular opera, almost as a
storyteller.
He also decides, leaving the music and text intact, to propose
narrative incisions, openings to some songs of oral tradition that bring us
back to the same historical period, rich in social and work songs.
In the show there
are 8 soloists and 12 choristers on stage - Chorus Inside, while the Chorus
Outside will intervene off stage:
Solo voices : Valentino Affinita, Maria Chiara Calvani, Gian Paolo
Castelli, Michele Manca, Bruno Mattei, Andrea Monaco, Flaviana Rossi, Lucia
Staccone
Choir Inside : Filippo Aparo, Enrico Author, Susanna Cerboni,
Elisabetta Colla, Laura Gubinelli, Vania Lucertini, Marcello
Mariucci , Elisabetta Mattei, Antonio Meta, Lidia Popolano, Rossano
Rossi, Susanna Ruffini,
Chorus Outside : Alessandro Campioni, Cristina Castiglione, Lucia
Corbo, Roberto Dati, Patrizia De Ruvo, Valeria Dolci, Daniela
D'Ottavi, Marcella Fenu, Patrizia Lucattini, Maria Silvia
Marmiroli, Franco Marsili, Maria Palozzi, Tonino Pellegrino, Paolo
Piacentini, Alessia Pistolini, Anne Sophie Poisot, Franca Renzini, Loredana
Salacone, Michele Scotto di Carlo, Maria Teofili, Anna Zaccagnini, Olivia
Zaccagnini, Vincenzo Zappa
It was born in
1992 from the Modi del Canto Contadino workshop held
by Giovanna Marini at the Popular School of Music in Testaccio with the need to continue to bring to
life, disseminate and pass on those that have been and still are the songs that
testify to the vitality of culture popular and the history of the lower
classes, bearers of universal values, justice, peace and work. In a few
years the Choir has grown to reach the current number of about 60
people. It was initially directed by Xavier Rebut , and then by Sandra
Cotronei .
The choir performs both alone and with the Banda della SPMT , directed by Silverio Cortesi , who wrote the arrangements for the
repertoire's band. The first exhibition with united organics was on 24
April 1994 in Sesto Fiorentino on the occasion of the
50th anniversary of the Resistance and since then the activity has continued in
theaters and squares as well as in some high schools in Rome with concerts
entitled Io Democrazia , made following
the participation in a Call of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage for the
diffusion of folk and oral tradition music. The choir's repertoire has
always moved in the light of a historical path for which the realization of
the IlPartito show seemed almost
natural , on the occasion of the centenary of the
birth of the PCI.
Musician, music educator and music therapist.
You form musically at the Popular School of
Music of Testaccio studying vocal technique, harmony,
ear training and improvisation. She combines this training with studies in
music theory, arrangement, ear training, teaching studies and music pedagogy
(she graduated in Kodaly Pedagogy at AIKEM in Turin) and music therapy at the
Metacultural Center directed by Boris Porena.
Since 2005 you have collaborated with the
European project MUS-E (Art for integration) founded by Yehudi Menuhin aimed at
promoting socio-cultural integration through art in schools located in
difficult socio-cultural contexts.
Since 2010 she has directed the Hymns and Songs
of Struggle Choir of the Popular School of Music of Testaccio
founded by Giovanna Marini.
In 2013 she created Fogli
Volanti, a seminar on political and social singing
that she conducts annually in collaboration with Giovanna Marini.
In 2017 she began conducting the popular choir IncontrovocE born in the Upter in
Rome. Since 2009 she has been collaborating with the Risvolti
Cooperative, creating choral workshops for the elderly in various
Municipalities of Rome.
Composer, trainer,
researcher and performer. She participated in the creation of the
Popular School of Music of Testaccio in
Rome, and was its didactic coordinator for 15 years. With the choir of the
SPMT, since the 1980s she has shared Giovanna Marini 's
research project on Italian polyphony of oral tradition. He works in
the field of vocality, music training, vocal improvisation and
multiculturalism, with courses and seminars designed for musicians, actors,
dancers, music teachers, educators, primary and secondary school teachers and
social workers, in Italy France and Switzerland, and deals with projects
related to interculturality. He conceives and creates installations and
sounds for different spaces through workshops on the relationship between
sound, space, movement and word and on the memory of places, with the
participation of professionals and amateurs. He collaborates with
directors and choreographers in the conception and realization of stage music
and in the formation and musical direction of an actor. He regularly
collaborates with the Teatro Due Mondi in Faenza, with
the Faber Teater in Chivasso, with the Teatro dell'Orsa in
Reggio Emilia and with the directors Gustavo Frigerio and Armand Deladoey and with the choreographer Adriana
Borriello .
A designer and not only, at the base of her artistic research there is the encounter
with the other, the exploration of the narrative dimension coming from the
people she often involves in her projects and to whom she entrusts the
important role of custodians and bearers of stories in relation to their
specific differences and attitudes, memories and experiences. He mainly
works with installation, video, drawing, site specific action , and other contemporary practices, involving
local communities from different territories. His artistic research in
recent times has focused on the forms of rituality in different cultures, on
the common elements found in the rites at the root of the cults of different
peoples. His projects often arise from real experience with the cultural
and linguistic pluralities that inhabit the city today, generating new forms of
coexistence, conflict and rituality.
The work was conceived and written by Fausto Amodei
for voices and instruments and for this Giovanna Marini and Sandra Alos Moner Cotronei have
entrusted Giulia Accardo with the task of organizing
and coordinating the instrumental group both with the choice of instruments and
performers and with the adaptation of the scores to the staff which is composed
as follows:
Guitar: Sylvie Genovese
Transverse flute: Giulia Accardo
Trumpet : Agnes Fiore
Violin: Rossella Pasquini
Cello: Alessia
Marcato
Giulia
Accardo , graduated from Santa Cecilia in Transverse Flute. Specialization in
Chamber Music.
Flute teacher at
the Middle Schools with musical address. He is part of the staff of the
Banda della
Popular Music
School of Testaccio and the Roman Popular Orchestra.