If he had put pen to paper with the intention of writing a song destined to become the official soundtrack of the coming of age of at least four generations, a masterpiece of this kind probably would not have come out. Night before the exams spoke about maturity, but it wasn’t a song about maturity: in the mind of Antonello Venditti, who in 1984 had recently returned to Rome after his self-inflicted exile in Milan to escape his failed marriage with Simona Izzo and he was putting the pieces of his life and career back together, the song was meant to describe the anxiety that preceded every examination of life.
Tomorrow evening the Roman singer-songwriter will celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the release of the song – and of the album it was part of, Cuore, which returned to the shops in the form of a special reissue last Friday with the addition of the unreleased single Di’ una parole – at the Terme of Caracalla, on a special night: the infamous evening of the eve of graduation (scheduled for the 19th). It will be from the stage of the ancient Capitoline spa complex – where he will also perform the day after tomorrow and on Friday 21 June – that this year Venditti will send his good luck to the 526 thousand 317 high school graduates who will have to take the state exam throughout Italy. The song that is popular in kids’ playlists is Night before the exams: this was revealed by the Skuola.net portal, which interviewed a thousand girls and boys who, starting from Wednesday, will have to take the 2024 final exams. For 9 out of 10 graduating seniors the soundtrack of the exam remains Venditti’s hit, which stands out over songs such as We Are the Champions by Queen and Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd (and current hits such as Sesso e samba by Tony Effe and Gaia, listened to by a third of those interviewed).
Venditti remembers his night before the exams at times: «Before the oral exam I went on a motorbike with a friend of mine to Florence. Madness. We returned on the same day as the exam: we arrived in front of Giulio Cesare on time.” In recent days on social media, by publishing videos made in various schools in Italy on the last day before the closure, in which groups of kids sing his song in unison, Antonello also shared a clip shot secretly outside his former high school , with the boys screaming at the top of their lungs the verses of the song he dedicated to Julius Caesar two years after the release of Notte prima degli exami. «I had just moved into a house in Trastevere, thanks to Lucio Dalla. In that house, one morning, the song came out by itself while I was playing the piano. In addition to that, I also wrote Ci would like a friend, thinking of Lucio, and Grazie Roma”, he says about the genesis of the song, which on streaming platforms is his most popular piece ever, with a total of 86 million streams. And precisely because it continues to be a catchphrase for the new generations too, tomorrow starting at 6 pm TikTok will broadcast an exclusive preview of the concert at the Baths of Caracalla, which will see Venditti and his band revive Cuore and the great successes of his musical history .
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