On May 3rd Massimo Ranieri will turn seventy. Beyond a single date, it is important what day by day an artist manages to achieve, whether he is twenty or seventy or one hundred and seventy … Nonetheless, for this birthday one could hypothesize, to get out of the usual patterns of occasion, to turn to Naples, his city of origin. To know what she would say to him and what she would say about him, it will be enough to ask her to ideally take the floor. A magic. Right here and now …
“He? He was born in my heart. On my heart. Seventy years have already passed, you say. So? Your human time is just a convention that doesn’t concern me. Because I am History. And I’m Mito. Anyway, I remember him well. I remember his light footsteps as he walked down my streets. The still gray dawns could already see him standing. He went to work. He was a kid. Some mornings there was haze over the sea before the wind. I also remember his father. It stuck with me once they walked together and at one point he took his hand. I’m not sure I did, but I feel like I turned a ray of my sun towards them at that moment, as a sign of friendship. He, the boy, I watched him grow up. And I understood a lot of his character and his intelligence. I discovered his greed to know. His dedication to a sense of duty. His being on the defensive with delicate and downplaying humor. And when he took the fragile path of Art, I felt he would make it. I’ve never doubted it. I have excellent intuition.
I always followed him. With curiosity, of course, but also with affection. I was also apprehensive about him. I saw him take a risk. I accompanied him invisibly in the recording studios, on the stages of the most difficult prose, during interminable rehearsals. On film sets full of comings and goings, dust, baskets and extras. I have seen him use all his energy. Near a piano. Behind the boom of a microphone. I remember him intent, serious, worthy of appreciation. And yet, I listened to her laugh in the distance, always recognizing it. If I want to laugh in the same way, my sky becomes all one precious stone and shines. When I hear the applause addressed to him in the theaters of the world, a wave of pride takes me. I remember, for example, a very special moment. At the end of the staging of “The good soul of Sezuan” by Bertolt Brecht. It had been a very demanding test. And he had made it. He had given life to his character as in a dramaturgical rapture invaded by rain and invisible planes in flight. Then, when he was with all the other actors to receive the enthusiastic applause of the audience, he had a strange look that I had never seen him before and I have never seen him since. An expression that declared, in a unique attitude, the great happiness and timid disbelief for having deserved the prestige of that stage. He had entered the reign of Giorgio Strehler.
He cherishes my melancholy, that state of mind that is mine alone which is thought. And I immediately realize when the same feeling, which is also a sensation, reaches him. You have to know it well to be aware of it. Maybe he smiles at those in front of him. Maybe she’s posing for a photograph. It seems there, but it is very far away. He walks through his own remote network of ideas. I know you shouldn’t bother him in these cases. Real artists, especially those of the theater, are simple and complicated. I remember Eduardo a moment before he got up from his chair in the dressing room. The mirror reflected him but he could no longer see him, as if he no longer had the same person in front of him. It’s the same with him. Extremely legible and indecipherable. After all, it was like that from the beginning. When he was very young, he was a very talented interpreter and presented himself with the demeanor of a prince. “When a King is born” he sang. Already. It just seemed like a happy start to hope. But I did not share such a simple reading: I felt the storm that invaded his soul. His unanswered questions. The fear of his magnificent and terrible gamble. So I always follow him where he is, together with the lights that envelop him on the stage. Even there for me he is always the boy of the past.
His self-denial for the theater is great in itself, in itself. Before the show, before the golden and insidious spotlight of a debut, he is alone with himself. Strong and fragile. Then I feel it dearer and closer. In truth, I am anxious for him. Sometimes I start leafing through memories in disorder. I know he does too. And in a similar way. There are many images that come to mind. Sharp as a painting. Bright and colorful. Sometimes they emerge in the wandering everyday life between one theater and another, on the ridge between truth and fiction. “This is life”, a boundless fresco, “strange balancing act” that is always renewed in more and more demanding tests of dexterity. For the others, for the spectators. Only in a silence that he stubbornly derives and belongs to him, maybe a memory comes on that remains all his.
He carries around my words made of music. My “exterminator Vesevo”. My nights that fall suddenly and my sudden downpours that astonish strangers. The traces of the countryside that bloom in flowing jasmine, in baskets of yellow lemons. And my unexpected stop and listen. He respects my mystery. And a little bit is part of it. Today, if I look at Massimo Ranieri, I know that he will always be able to reconfirm the trust I have in him. I also know that when I feel confused by the incessant stories that are made of me, by the prompt explanations that are given of me, when I am lost among the thousands of words that follow me, he is able to give me back to my restless soul. At the doors and windows that open every morning again. To the peace of my cloisters. To the treasures of my libraries. To the reflections on my glasses. On my peeling stairs full of voices. At my doors crossed by light winds between the hanging clothes. He brings all my Capodimonte roses back to me. It rekindles my gouaches to “keep tints”. He repaints my ships full of nostalgia. Look at my crossroads of stars higher than all. Because I am Parthenope. And he is my son ».