«Despite my love for Magna Graecia, I had never seen it live Riace’s bronzes before now. You can almost see the light shining on them. They seem to breathe. They are a wonderful miracle. that you don’t often get to admire. I’m happy for Reggio». He stopped in the Bronze Room just arrived at the national archaeological museum of Reggio Calabriathe singer-songwriter writer Roberto Vecchioni returned to the shores of the Strait to present his book Between silence and thunder (Einaudi). The first presentation in Calabria.
The Bronzes, the ancient and the roots of the present
«It’s a day for me high emotionsOf those memorable ones that you feel when you find yourself in places that tell of civilization, of a sense of time, of the sky and the gods, of antiquity which ultimately is and remains there deep root of our present. Ways of living have changed never feelings we are made of, those have remained identical.
We are the fruit of those eras and our art is too, even if we are faced with works that were already authentic masterpieces back then». So she continued Roberto Vecchioni defining Calabria as a «wonderful land and at the same time full of known problems. Someone wants to ruin it. Instead it would have all the potential to be a caput of Italy. We hope that it becomes one for its community, for its young people».
Happy birthday
After the visit to the two Warriors, always accompanied by the director of the national archaeological museum of Reggio Calabria, Fabrizio Sudanoand by the professor of Classical Archaeology and didactics of the park and museum of the University of Calabria, Stefania Mancuso, entered the Piazza Paolo Orsi was packed with the museumwelcomed by a warm applause and a chorus of good wishes. In the day of his 81st birthday the great lyricist, writer, poet and teacher from Brianza, passionate about puzzles, Roberto Vecchioni, he has in fact returned to Reggio Calabria. «Being here today is an honor. I have the love of my family and my children every day. L’love of a place so strong and ancient, so courageous and wonderful only every now and then. When there is an opportunity, I gladly take it. That’s why I’m here today,” he said said upon his entrance.
The museum’s summer evening openings
«We wanted to inaugurate the depth with this event extraordinary evening openings of the museum. From the first of July every Friday Extraordinary evening opening hours are expected 8.00pm to 11.00pmat a cost of 3 euros, until the end of August. It also reopens the Museum library closed by the pandemic. Thanks to the work of our official Maria Saraceno will return to the public on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
We also work for a museum that is increasingly an international cultural attractor and open to the Strait. On Thursday we will host the second edition of the Tourism Meeting 2024, promoted by the Municipality and Metropolitan City of Messina, by the Municipality and Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria, and by the Strait Port Authority”. This is what was announced director of the museum Fabrizio Sudanoat the opening of the presentation meeting.
Greek colonization and Nosside of Locri
«This book lends itself very well to being narrated in a context such as that of an archaeological museum. Inevitably that of Roberto Vecchioni’s writing is steeped in classicism. In any collection his thought always turns to the ancientto recover values that are universal. In particular in this book, there are explicit quotes about our land. What better place, therefore, than the Reggio Calabria museum for this first presentation in Calabria.
There Greek colonization that began in the 8th century he disseminated in southern Italy and Sicily the ancient Greek culture. Then our Noxidethe poetess from Locri. Professor Vecchioni is an extraordinary scholar of lyric poetry Sappho and Nossis makes some gods connections that are extraordinary». As Stefania Mancuso, professor of classical archeology and park and museum education at the University of Calabria.
Between silence and thunder
“Between silence – our being, our thoughts – and thunder there is a dialogue between a person and his soul, his memory. A person – he explained Roberto Vecchioni – which tells the story his life, his mistakes, the right choices, the things he fell in love with, many of which are ancient. In short, it is an epistolary with himself. A dual novel as everything is in life since its origins, since Parmenides and Heraclitus, being and becoming».
On this occasion his literary effort is a novel defined as poignant and intimatecomposed of fifty-three letters, fifty-three moments of life that a young man pulls out of the hat of his existence, telling them to real, imaginary characters. The grandfather is therefore not called to answer because perhaps he already knows.
From the proscenium of a Greek theater to the illuminated stage of his concertsRoberto Vecchioni continues enchant the audiencespeaking straight to the heart that for having loved cannot fail to have experienced “a bloody sweetness”. Discreet and confidential on immense pain of losing a child, harrowing experience that he went through last year with the death due to illness of 36 year old son Arrigo with his second and current wife, the writer and activist Daria Colombo. He didn’t mention it but it was his a praise to life and love, to boundless passions, to the feelings that make one alive and true to oneself, That they keep ancient, because they represent “that sacred part that is needed to live”.
Ancient Greek culture up to us
Roberto Vecchioni thus presented his novel whose title is on the shores of the Strait a verse from the song “Chiamami anchor Amore” with which he won at Sanremo in 2011, “Between the silence and the thunder”. A presentation separated from the extraordinary Riace Bronzes just visited and admired, only by a glass.
«The Bronzes behind me are alive. I am – underlined Roberto Vecchioni – the sign of a civilization, the Greek one, which created, shaped life by inventing the theater where the community together he saw and lived thelove, anxiety, the drama of death, the beauty of life through representation.”
The love
«Greek has spread everywhere and has reached us. We are all partly Greek, he emphasized again – especially those who live in Calabria, Sicily, Lucania. You can’t not know anything about Greek cultureof thought, of philosophy, of literature, of poetry, of theatre. No one has discovered anything new since then, investigating the tremendous conflict between spirit and matter. Even if the world today is going in a different direction we cannot ignore antiquity which already teaches us everything. Sophocles wrote that Oedipus said to his daughter on his deathbed Antigone, desperate not to cry: “There is only one word that frees us from the darkness, from the evil of the world. And that word is love“».
And it was exactly the word Love seals this well-attended meeting at the museum in Reggio Calabria concluded applause and standing ovation. Then the station at the desk for the demanding signing of copies of the book, and dozens and dozens of people in line.
Roberto Vecchioni
A story in every song as well as in pages of his rich literary production (almost twenty publications) that already with “Check God” had led him to Reggio Calabria in the summer of 2009 as part of the Rhegium Julii literary cafés at the Pentimele Oasis.
Winner of Tenco Award in 1983, the Festivalbar Award in 1992, the Sanremo Festival and the Mia Martini Critics Award in 2011, Roberto Vecchioni has never only stood out for his talent and musical and authorial sensitivity. The passion for has always been innate the myths of history, literature and art and for the extraordinary ability to speak and be with young people. A love that he did not fail to transpose into his musical poetics, manifested in the intergenerational song “Sogna, Ragazzo Sogna” from 1999, interpreted with Alfa on the occasion of the Sanremo 2024 festival.
An intense artistic career that began in the 1960s marked by oover 40 albums, from Samarcanda to Dream boy dream and The infinite passing through Per amore mio and Camper. A passion that did not distance him from his boys. He has always taught literary subjects in high schoolalso teaching college courses and weaving an increasingly special relationship with young people. Luca Vignoli, promising 27-year-old mayor of the Bolognese city of Castel Maggiore, he was elected with a civic list of under 30 ‘New things’ who defeated the Pd, thanks also to the support of the “professor”.
And his energy still overflows from his words and fromenthusiasm with which he meets people. Also in Reggio Calabria the invitation to poetry as soul and feeling. Once again in Reggio Calabria he left «a piece of paper on the desk» when «only one verse is missing from that poem (…)».
