Claudio Baglioni
Q.P.G.A. - questo piccolo grande amore

Even in Italy, some songwriters have ventured into books of various kinds, mostly novels and poetry, but also essays: Fabrizio De André (with writer Alessandro Gennari) in the novel 'Un destino ridicolo', Francesco Guccini (two or three titles between essays and stories), Roberto Vecchioni (of whom I recall a book of twisted versions of the most famous fairy tales) and Ligabue (the collection of poems 'Lettere d'amore nel frigo').

Thus, Baglioni, who among three titles has produced a novel, 'Q.P.G.A. – questo piccolo grande amore', with a title almost the same as the '72 album, which less than 40 years later (2009) saw an expanded version (bringing to life the original idea, of a story, then rejected by the record labels), 'Q.P.G.A.', a film of the same title as the original album (made by director Riccardo Donna with Emanuele Bose and Mary Petruolo), and the novel.

My contact with the work was curious: this Winter, every Tuesday after a few hours of school, I walked from there to a pedestrian street not far away.

A store of a famous second-hand book chain displayed two book carts outside at 'bargain' prices, and in one of these was Baglioni's novel.

Skimming through it the first few times did not attract me, but to end up buying it, I took advantage of the purchase of another book for a high school teacher I had replaced some time before, with the idea of making summaries from it to publish on my Facebook page, to entice Friends who love Baglioni to buy it.

And I'm not sorry: I found in those pages the atmospheres of Baglioni's album (the one from '72), slightly less emotional than in the music, but more 'realistic' in describing the settings, people, and situations where the two protagonists of the novel, Andrea and Giulia, find themselves.

Moreover, I found the air of Rome, where I had gone for the second time in 2017 (the first in 2001) for a Ministry competition, immersing myself also with some songs by Baglioni (especially in the area of Porta Portese, where unfortunately I couldn't attend the market).

The story sees Andrea, an architect who had moved from Rome to Paris many years before, where he has a studio, returning to his city after a long absence, with an award trip to attend a ceremony for a project won by his own studio.

The trip is seen by him as an opportunity to see his city again since 1977, the last time he had seen his mother alive, while waiting for the flight to Paris.

On the day of departure, having landed at Fiumicino airport, Andrea sees a world completely different from the one he had left.

Greeted by a steward who is supposed to take him to the hotel and the ceremony venue, on the way to the service car, Andrea is captivated by a poster in a bookstore for a novel, a love story set in early '70s Rome, the era of the hippies, written by a woman he had a love affair with back then: Giulia. He buys it.

On the way to the hotel, Andrea asks the steward to change direction and take him to a point on the Lungotevere, where he had sealed his love with Giulia.

After leaving the car and walking away, Andrea reads the novel and finds the love story with her just the same.

His adventure begins in 1970 in Piazza del Popolo, at a demonstration with a friend, from which he escapes due to police charges.

Sheltering in a bar, he is 'approached' by a girl, Giulia, a student at a Classical High School (Andrea is also a student, at the Faculty of Architecture), who, seeing him in bad shape, asks him what happened to him.

From this, a love story between the two is born little by little, despite coming from different social backgrounds: Andrea is the son of an engineer, in the popular area of Centocelle, while Giulia is from a wealthy family in a residential neighborhood of the city.

And it develops although with some difficulties due to different mentalities (visible, for example, in the bad behavior of many of Andrea's friends towards Giulia at a party where she had been invited or in the mother's attempts to forbid Giulia from seeing Andrea, considered unsuitable for her future).

A trial by fire of their love is Andrea's departure for mandatory military service in Northern Italy.

Keeping the promise made by both to write to each other during the period of forced separation, it is impossible for them to meet (visible in her failed attempt to secretly take a train for the location where Andrea is in service, due to the captain of the barracks' obstacle to the latter who had asked for just a few minutes of leave to see her, being on guard duty that evening), causing anger and sadness in both.

Andrea also secretly leaves the barracks one weekend to go to Rome to say goodbye to Giulia: after getting out of the station, he rushes to the Porta Portese market to buy some civilian clothes so as to appear in the evening to her as a surprise.

But while wandering through the market, he sees her from a distance with a guy (who a few pages later turns out not to be hers) and leaves the market angry and broken, convinced of a betrayal.

After the end of military service, the two arrange to meet on the Lungotevere, but the meeting lasts just a serious and bitter glance from both, who being at a distance, each go their own way.

Having finished reading, Andrea praises Giulia for the truthfulness of the written story, despite some characters' names changed and some traits a bit exaggerated, and with closed eyes reflects on the prejudices nurtured against Giulia, having seen her with the other guy and acknowledging his faults.

In the evening, after the ceremony, Andrea meets the father he hasn't seen in 30 years and invites him for a drink.

Having arrived at a place, sitting at a table, and ordered a bottle of wine, Andrea talks with him about his childhood, but mainly about his mother.

Once he bid farewell to his father, Andrea asks the steward to take him to a hill above Rome, where he had spent his last evening with Giulia before leaving for military service.

Finding himself there alone, he thinks that the trip to Rome's purpose was to clarify unresolved points in his love story.

He is overcome by a sense of joy, closes his eyes, smiles, and leaves. He returns to the hotel before departing for Paris the next day.

Even in a love story with the nature of a popular novel with a sad ending, Baglioni's album's prose version struck me by showing a social setting perceived more than in the original album and its extended version.

Donna's film, on the other hand, suffocates the novel's social setting and atmosphere, giving the story too much of a musical quality (with dances I find inappropriate), denaturing it and making the film boring and far from evocative down to the deepest levels of the era's atmospheres.

The only thing I would save is Mary Petruolo's innocent and charming face as Giulia: so enchanted by her, I imagined her always in every moment Giulia lived in the novel.

Thus, against all my expectations, 'Q.P.G.A.' became the novel of my heart: page after page I felt the Rome of 2017 again, for which I had prepared over the previous years through literature, politics...and music.

If I had known this novel and Mary Petruolo earlier, I would have brought them with me, and at certain points, I would have read passages and imagined her as Giulia living in front of my eyes, word by word unfolding her adventures as a dreamer girl (that was the year of Alessandra Mastronardi and the TV series 'C'era una volta Studio Uno' [the story of three young girls who want to enter the world of television, in the early '60s, at Rai, succeeding in various ways and fields], and her in my heart along the streets of the Eternal City, in a memorable three-day trip).

I settled for returning to the popular atmospheres of that fantastic city, in breaks a bit at school and during recovery from Covid in Spring.

An excellent way to return in spirit to those streets...