Edoardo Vianello
Recital/Concerto all'Auditorium, Roma 20.4.2006

THE REVIEW

At that time the sun was yellow, it didn't have spots like today. And the race was on to soak up as much as possible, forget about UV rays.

Summer was a portal to a happy island of sand, sun, sea, and love. The people of a little Italy who traveled on the 600s, the 850s, or at most the 1100s, entered in early June into an altered state where love rhymed with dance halls, roses, and sea promenades. Mina was talented, Rita ate pappa col pomodoro, Gigliola was too young, and Gianni went to the military, but Edoardo's hit was always the summer anthem.
With infallible precision, every summer Vianello targeted the radios with a 45 RPM that would explode in the cultural substratum of all Italy. We listened to "For this year/don’t change/same beach, same sea,” while irresponsibly pouring cement on our most beautiful coasts. We protested "How many times do I have to say/The sand no/Take a shower then come here,” and naively relied on nature's self-regeneration for our industrial waste. “With fins, rifle, and sunglasses” we armed ourselves for the summer, irrationally spending more than we earned.

Caterina protested that no one could judge her, and the politicians empathized: the debt/GDP ratio was reducing the credibility of the Bel Paese at the same speed fashion shortened skirts. Innocent bliss. Sometimes they return… and with a grin from ear to ear, like the other evening. To recreate the carefree atmosphere of the '60s, Vianello appears with his Tremarelle, three tall girls (or is it that he's short?) in op-art dresses, while four hyperactive dancers, also in skimpy variations of black and white, create a whirlwind of Barbarelle at the sides. He celebrates with a recital/concert marking his 50 years on Italian stages, and the occasion is a flutter of flashlights on the personalities who came to pay tribute to him. Two hours are enough for him to showcase the best of his career—from explosive summer hits to the sentimental ways of the Vianella. His primary color sketches are timeless. The more serious compositions, which market demands forced him to attempt during the protest years, didn't convince: they didn’t scratch the surface of formica, didn’t graze the terital of skirts, didn’t rumple the nylon of the shirts of that American dream made in Italy. From that face, from that voice, a thoughtful or sorrowful note?

Come on, Vianello is a dynamo that radiated, and still radiates positivity. It is a pleasure to have wanted to participate, defying fashion and the calendar, in this celebration: the voice is fresh, powerful, perfectly tuned, precise, and nimble in timing, the character's genuineness salutary, the instinctive communicativeness, the immediacy of the music irresistible (I believe he patented that RRRRR), the unmistakable virrrrrrrrrvve. Vianello is in great shape, he was born for the stage and he’s ready to share his dazzling smile with us for the next fifty years. Ah, back then there was also music for pure and simple fun.

Cha cha cha, twist, surf, hully gully… it would be worth breaking into the apartments of the bored ladies and overweight gentlemen in the audience just to seize these exotic treasures forgotten in their discos…