National Premiere
April 13–16, 2023 – Ancona, Teatro delle Muse
April 18–23, 2023 – Milan, Teatro Carcano

Neri Marcorè returns to engage with Fabrizio De André in a new teatro-canzone production that brings La buona novella back to life on stage, the album released by the songwriter in 1969. After the success of Quello che non ho, Marcorè and playwright-director Giorgio Gallione renew their artistic partnership in the name of the great Genoese singer-songwriter, staging his first concept album. With an explicitly theatrical approach, La buona novella is constructed almost in the form of a chamber opera, with score and text composed to give voice to many characters: Mary, Joseph, Tito the thief, the chorus of mothers, a carpenter, the people. It is precisely from this foundation that the theatrical version takes shape.

“This show is conceived as a kind of contemporary Sacred Representation that alternates and intertwines De André’s songs with narrative passages drawn from the apocryphal Gospels that inspired the author himself. Prose and music are assembled into a score consistent with the path traced by the author on the album. The spoken sections, like an ancient tale, underscore the evocative power and the value of the original songs, revealing their mythical and literary sources,” writes Gallione.

The “revolutionary” significance of De André’s rewriting lies in the decision of a secular artist to address a theme so unusual for those times. “I believe an artist’s task is to comment on the events of their time, using the tools of art: allegory, metaphor, comparison.” This statement by De André is emblematic of how the author positioned himself—at a time of intense student unrest—toward such a delicate and widely debated subject from both political and spiritual perspectives.

In the set designs by Marcello Chiarenza, we rediscover the images that characterize the poetics of the sculptor and theatrical set designer: works of great evocative power whose symbols resonate with the metaphors, allegories, and comparisons spoken of by De André.