Francesco Guccini
Opera buffa

What strikes me most about Francesco Guccini is his ability to surprise in every way without ever seeming repetitive, using devices that are not easy to employ either in his time or today. This is demonstrated by the work I am reviewing now.

We are still a little distant from the era of the timeless "L'Avvelenata", but just a year after the "boom" of the masterpiece "Radici" (which includes "La Locomotiva", "Il Vecchio E Il Bambino", etc.). The cover is surprising, a clown mask (probably, but I haven't yet figured out if it is someone wearing it or just a mask) with an apparently curious look in front of a completely white vinyl with the album name written on it. But it is precisely this particular cover that gives us the key to understanding the essence of this work.

This is "Opera Buffa," an album, according to Francesco himself, born by chance but not by chance, already in the making for some time, a sort of "other face of...". It is a playful, cabaret-like work, a divertissement.

The dances open with "Il Bello", which occurred to him using the tics of provincial life as a starting point. The result is a profile of the cocky and slick young boy who, with his "Galera" and his "savoir faire," breaks hearts in the local dance halls. All of it in two minutes and a little more.

"Di Mamme Ce N'è Una Sola" is an ode to maternal love with the typical verve of the Modenese singer-songwriter, all accompanied by a skillful use of violin, wind instruments, and percussion.

The highlight of the CD is "La Genesi", a hilarious narration about the creation of man, where Guccini imagines God, bored in a universe without television, deciding, in his distraction, to create the universe, then creating man from leftovers.

"There was a bit of cheese and two cans of Simmenthal, that is, he put them together, and then...

He took a little red clay, made the flesh, made the bones,

spat on it, there was a big thunder, and that's how man was born..."

But what about "Fantoni Cesira"? Dedicated to Sofia Loren, it’s a kind of brilliant portrait of one of those girls you can still find around today. The protagonist is Cesira, daughter of an alcoholic who never has a penny and has given up house, job, daughter, and spouse for wine. This girl, orphaned after her mother's suicide, finds a job in a factory where she dreams of a princess-like life full of various splendors and meets a producer who offers her a movie career after spending a night together (all after being elected "Miss Tette"), and conquers Cinecittà by placing her father in a hospice, quitting her job, buying a topless outfit to show her breasts and racing "to Rome with the first train," where she is kept by an honorable man, goes to bed with three producers while studying diction, singing, directing, and acting, and adopting the stage name Cesy Phantoni.

"And the moral of this story today is not that strange: to have money, fame, and glory you have to be a bit of a whore!"

Indeed, it is not very different from certain situations today.

"Talkin' Sul Sesso" is a slap to all prudish hypocrites, which in my opinion would be beneficial even today to certain fake professors seen on TV or in politics.

Everything ends with "La Fiera Di San Lazzaro", a popular Bolognese nursery rhyme that refers to a traditional market held every year in the Municipality of San Lazzaro di Savena. It is "laugh-out-loud funny".

This cabaret aspect of his will return in the future, but unfortunately only in the hilarious "I Fichi" contained in "D'Amore Di Morte E Di Altre Sciocchezze" from 1996.

In summary, for me, this is not an anomalous album (as probably someone thought at the time of release). It's one of those works that today should be rediscovered and re-evaluated, ready to amaze again. A gem not to be underestimated in Guccini's discography and also a good way to have a few laughs "à la Modenese".