Maybe few of us believed it. But there were many of us, I’m sure, hoping that yet another dream would come true. Yesterday the Great Wizard just needed a touch of his wand – magical, obviously – to start the enchantment.
Among the many projects that his tireless mind designs, there will also have been this one, between now and 2026, and yesterday he pulled it out of the hat exclusively for us. What better audience, after all, could welcome and support, with voices, with hands, with applause and tears of nostalgia, such an operation, if not that of his very affectionate Clabbers?
The Divine Claudio doesn’t miss a beat. He said he was unprepared for this appointment, a head-and-neck recovery, in a very crowded billboard at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, of a December date missed due to indisposition.
The first thing he said?
“Sorry for the delay“
After all, I had been ill the days before, but that very day I felt great!
But it would have been too late to call you all back here again! So, here, “sorry for the delay”.
Because he always puts the public first.
Because the merits are never his.
“Now I’m not sure what we’ll do. You’ll hear me get the words wrong, because I’m not ready, because I don’t even know some songs anymore!”
Try to make yourself small. To throw it on the low profile. To mock himself. It was even the common thread, yesterday, of his hilarious anecdotes, between one song and another, about the thousand adventures experienced in the very long journey of his career, from the very beginning to the ’80s.
The gaffes, the falls, the bad luck, the unlikely characters encountered, the absurdity of the world upside down. Told with considerable humor and comic timing. Even imitator, if necessary. We are used to laughing with him and we are not at all surprised that he is great at this too. Precisely. He will never be able to, the man of various ages, convince us that sometimes he is inadequate and needs to be put into perspective.
So much so that yesterday he amazed his loyal audience by creating entirely alone, without anyone else on stage and for almost five hours, a priceless jewel woven from very rare pearls. A crossing into the infinite sea of her slightly more hidden masterpieces, excluding for once all the well-celebrated and well-known hits, also the plot of the last triumphal tour “To All Heart”.
It was a dive into crystalline Caribbean waters, in which this wise helmsman sang about love “My way”, made the notes vibrate in “Doremifasol”, shouted “I still love you”, lit up “Il sole e la moon”, he remembered “And there you are”, he traveled there, “In the sun in the salt in the south”, he narrated the “Snow days”, he rode “The plain of wild horses”, he cradled us with ” Ninna Nanna Nanna Ninna”, he took “Photographs”, he arranged to meet us under the “Osram Lamp”, he awakened the “Country Girl”, he bowed to a “Reginella”, he spied and portrayed the “Lady of the hours axes”, he made the violin resonate at “Old Samuel”, he painted three different loves from three different eras within the Sunday of “All football minute by minute”, he reminded us that “Peace” is the only possible solution to our life and beat the “distant drums” in time to the music, because this is the only way to beat time.
The list of wonders is still long.
He is increasingly taken by the narrative. Captivating, engaging, amused, passionate, at times moved.
The soul magnificently childish. Meanwhile, his technical and vocal prowess reaches those heights that the objectively very high difficulty of performing so many pieces requires.
All this would have been enough. But we had so much, so much more, that I can’t explain. Including, towards the end, a special guest of a Rad-UNO who for a few minutes divides himself into two, or rather, in “Quei due”, in the splendid performance of a truly irreducible Claudio, paired with his extraordinary Giovanni, embraced to the inevitable guitar.
No approximation, therefore, no matter how much he wants to belittle himself, and very little improvisation, except in some amusing digressions between one story and another. Because Claudio Baglioni is like this. And those who know him well know perfectly well how far his obsessive precision and impeccable professionalism reach in everything in which he exposes himself personally.
Yesterday he was joking about it a bit, telling us about when, in disbelief and deep down proud, his “Cosa Piccolo Grande Amore” was designated song of the century and therefore he would have been the author of the century.
Well, we’re not far from the truth at all.
A musical and compositional genius who, I fear, will have no equal in present and future generations. One of the most brilliant literary minds of contemporary times, combined with a stratospheric artistic talent.
The difficult thing is separating yourself from him and from that enchantment every time, which envelops you like a blanket and makes you float on a happy island, far from the adversities that await you outside. Yesterday, and it was the right occasion, he took out the “End Credits”: “Before the world laughs or is moved, applauds or leaves, at the end credits”, he told us. The lump in my throat rises forcefully.
It takes an improvised and reassuring “Strada fare”, the only exception granted on the sly to this very particular setlist, for the final farewell of this unforgettable gathering number twenty-three, close to the evening, to make it melt.
What to say? There will never be enough words to describe everything that the Claudio universe is. And we will never have enough to thank him for this Life that he gives to our lives.
See you soon, Claudio, on to the next dream.
Katia Ferla
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