Alloisio: “Theatre-song is not recognized as a genre”

“The theatre-songdespite its great tradition in Italy, it is not recognized as a genre and, if you want to deposit it in Siae for example, you can’t do anything other than do it as a mixed work. I hope the podcast I decided to create will be able to better appreciate its peculiarities and history, making it better known.” Gian Piero Alloisio is a highlander. The artist and playwright, who worked in his career with the fathers of song-theater Giorgio Gaber and Sandro Luporiniis one of the last, perhaps the last, to carry forward a certain tradition and concrete idea. And he is ready to face a new dimension: “This wonderful life of artists”, the theater-song show he wrote and performed, will be released on September 30th for the first time in podcast form on the most important digital platforms.

“All the musical and theatrical material is unpublished – explains Alloisio – except for one homage to my friend Giorgio Gaber and a tribute to my little sister Robertaan ethnic singer who died prematurely in 2017, two beacons that guided me in the realization of this project”. The podcast will be divided into 6 episodes, which will be released every Monday and Thursday until October 17th. Inside there are 13 songs and 12 theatrical monologues through which Alloisio talks about his suburbs, the scouts, his first love, the anarchists, Fabrizio De André, the Maestrone, Mr. G, Sandro Luporini, Sabrina Salerno, Totò, the coach of the national team, the Knights Templar, of number 3.14, of a pain as great as the loss of his sisterof Jean Gabin, of the caretaker of the Hotel Doria, of the Apocalypse and of a “reasonable language of the afterlife”.

The show, recorded at the Teatro della Tosse in Genoa by Aldo De Scalzi, will therefore find a new digital life in the podcast. But where does this need come from? “On January 1, 2023, your director Franco Zanetti called me for an interview on Rockol and told me that a researcher from the Sorbonne, Fabio Barbero, was working on song-theater – recalls Alloisio – Zanetti mentioned my name to the researcher who asked him for advice, confirming that somehow all roads led to meone of the last, if not the last, to carry out a true musical dramaturgy in song-theater. And so a feeling, a responsibility arose in me: how to bring a spectator, in a new way, into the theatre-song? My daughter suggested using the podcast”.

An instrument that seems to marry perfectly with the “rules” of the genre. “To truly appreciate a song-theatre show, it cannot be broken up or divided into many small parts – underlines Alloisio – it needs to be listened to for many and several minutes, the podcast in this sense, unlike normal streaming platforms, it is ideal because it allows a dive into this universe of words, songs, stories and monologues. Musical dramaturgy is the true beating heart of this genre, which should not be confused with what they do the singer-actors or with those who simply make speeches between one song and another”.

The podcast will contain a very wide variety of songs, often linked to monologues. “It will be possible to listen ‘I know you’re there anyway’a song that opens the show and is dedicated to my family, or ‘Call Faber’a piece on De André’s 1975 concert at the Giocata del Porto in Genoa in which he invited the anarchists – explains Alloisio – then space for ‘Song of Energy’ initially written for Roberta, my sisterthen resumed and concluded after his death, ea ‘Journey to Pavana’which recounts the visit to Francesco Guccini, with whom I worked. I inserted a tribute to the founders of this genre, Gaber and Luporini, proposing ‘The Dilemma’. It’s a piece that, when I first heard it proposed by Gaber, I thought didn’t concern me. But I was, over time, proven wrong. Obviously it’s also in the podcast ‘This wonderful life of artists’ which I wrote shortly before launching the show, is a symbolic song that explains a lot about my story and my choices.”