Luigi Lunari, famous and nobody knows

Luigi Lunari

 

Luigi Lunari is one of the greatest living playwrights in Italy.

As he mentioned in a recent interview to the «Corriere della Sera», thanks to his great and typical sense of humor:

I’m famous and nobody knows me.

In reality, he has written many important plays and worked with important theater directors, but maybe he is still not as much famous as he should be, especially in Italy, and that’s probably because of his extreme spirit of independence that often ended with him being isolated, although – as he explains in the same interview – this made him free to slam every door and walk away from any place, when he had felt that was the right thing to do.

Premio Salvo Randone, 1996

 

Born in Milan in 1934, as written on his Wikipedia Italian profile:

in 1939, in order to protect him from fascist indoctrination school , he was enrolled by his father at the Deutsche Schule in Milan, managed by the ‘Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady’, unpopular with the Hitler regime and far from any Nazi ideology. From 1942 to 1946 he lived the period of displacement in the hometown of his father, Vicenza, in the Venetian region.

After a degree in Law, due to his great curiosity and versatility, he studied many disciplines from music (piano, composition, and conducting) to languages, theater, of course, but for his own interest also physics, astronomy, formal logic, psychoanalysis, biology, zoology, and cybernetics.

He had an interest in dramaturgy since when he was a child and began to write plays very early. With his first mature work, at the age of eighteen, he won a prize with a play called Giovanna.

Since 1960 he started to collaborate at Piccolo Teatro di Milano, with Paolo Grassi and with Giorgio Strehler, the important director of theater and opera, until 1982.

With Ernesto Calindri, Milan, 1985

 

Luigi Lunari’s work is very extensive. He wrote many important plays, essays, and some fiction. Particularly extensive is his work as a translator, especially of plays (Molière), adaptations for the director Giorgio Strehler (Shakespeare, Brecht) but also some challenging works of fiction such as The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. He also wrote fiction for radio and TV and for his non-fiction production, in addition to the essays, he has had a very extensive activity as a journalist and theater critic and music.

 

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Thanks. Make Yours Italy would like to thank Luigi Lunari for his kindness and availability. We are honored to have been allowed by him to publish on our website his play Three on the Seesaw, represented around the world and soon staged in Canada. If there is anyone among our readers in Calgary and surroundings, we suggest you to go and see it!

Fire Exit Theatre of Calgary:

Three men walk into a room, each with a different destination, yet all three end up exactly where they are supposed to be. […].

 

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Luigi Lunari Wikipedia (Italian)

Luigi Lunari (English)

Teatro Piccolo Milan

 

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Learn Italian: Tre sull’altalena (Three on the Seesaw)

 

 

 

Luigi Impieri, an eclectic artist

by Stefania Bufano

Luigi Impieri is a very active, eclectic and passionate artist, with many interests.

He was born in Belvedere Marittimo (Cosenza, South Italy), in 1960. After receiving a Diploma of Art he moved, having a Diploma of Scenography (from “Accademia di Belle Arti” in Rome) and a Degree in Discipline of Arts, Music Entertainment (from the University of Bologna). He is actually in Forlì, a town in Emilia-Romagna, where he works as an artist and teacher and lives there still since many years ago.

 

Luigi Impieri, Inverno, 1997

 

It’s not easy to tell you about him, painter of the “oneiric-figurative”, because he did a lot of things.

Luigi Impieri, Vengono, 2009

 

Luigi Impieri, Vanno, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can give you a cursory glance and certainly refer you to his remarkable work, which addresses not only the painting and drawing, but also the interior design and teaching art to children and youngsters, with whom he spends time actively in projects truly beautiful and admirable, creating collective works with them and that they “live” in the city and not only closed in private homes or museums.

 

Luigi Impieri, Rosso d’Oriente, 2009

 

Look, for example, at these wonderful works with children and youngsters, since the start up until the opening: Si-Cura-Mente and Attaversa_menti 2 l’Aria.

 

Luigi Impieri, Quel fantastico mercoledì, l’onda, 2010

 

When I think of Luigi Impieri’s works, I think of bright colors, sea, sky, open space, air, energy, generosity, and many good and beautiful things that somehow also remind me of the discipline of yoga, which of course, this eclectic and energetic artist who we are talking about practices at an advanced level!

 

Luigi Impieri, L’albero di Malevich, 2012

 

 

Finally, if you read in Italian you could read him about his work here: Quel che penso della mia pittura.

 

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Luigi Impieri

Mosaics

 

Italian X Factor, Mika and Chiara

by Stefania Bufano

Today I would like to tell you about the Italian TV series X Factor and a song. Its particularity is that it’s sung both in English (for most of the time really) and in Italian!

Mika who here sings with Chiara I think you already know. He has been a guest in this program during the 2012 edition, singing with Chiara, who was on competition with others.

In 2013, last year, Mika has been called to be part of the jury and he has had a big success with the Italian audience, for his nice and funny ways. He knows a lot of languages: English, lebanese, french and others. When he arrived in Italy he told then he has taken an Italian teacher who taught him every day. He was very funny when told that he couldn’t study very well in the morning, being very tired going to bed late every night. While he was telling about that you could imagine the teacher following him around the flat, speaking to him in Italian, in fact he said thanks her that she has been so patient.

So, he learned the Italian language in three months! And he was really funny when during the competition he was explaining in Italian to the boys and the girls what he thought about their shows and when he made language mistakes and asking then to the other judges how to speak well the wrong word. So nice, so funny!

One night, a surprise: Mika sang and then appeared Chiara, the winner of the last edition of the program. They repeated the same song that they sang when Chiara won the competition and now is a popular singer.

This song, written by Mika, it was before in English only. After he might like Italy or like the Italian language or make a present to the Italian people, he has made this song a little different, putting Italians words.

The text is on the screen on you tube, so enjoy it! I hope you will like this mixture of Italian and English language at the same time by two beautiful voices!

 

Stardust, bilingual version

 

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Mika in Italy

Italian version featuring Chiara

Chiara

Chiara Galiazzo and Mika (video)

 

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Nearly midnight

by Stefania Bufano

 

Quasi mezzanotte

 

Il giorno dopo è ora

e domani sempre

nei respiri unici che vorrei cogliere

e non posso

come le rotondità

di musiche ininterrotte

e l’addio che non potei darti.

 

Il giorno dopo è già qui,

non ho fatto nulla

che potrà renderti immortale

perché è già di nuovo quasi mezzanotte

e io, tra i suoi bagliori incerti

in uno stesso lampo

ho visto me invecchiare,

in un lampo tutto avere e perdersi in quelle luci.

 

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Nearly midnight

 

The day after is now

and tomorrow always

in the unique breaths that I would like to take

and I can not,

like the roundnesses of unbroken musics

and the good bye I couldn’t give to you.

 

The day after is here already,

and nothing I have done

to make you immortal

’cause it’s again nearly midnight

and among its trembling beams,

in the same flash

I have seen myself grown old,

to get everything in a flash, and to get lost in those lights.

 

 

(Caterham, May 28, 1996 – Translated by M. Del Bigo)

Manuscript. Quasi mezzanotte, 1996

A true jewel

by Stefania Bufano

Death in Venice (Morte a Venezia) is one of the masterpieces of Italian cinematography. The film, made by Luchino Visconti, is adapted from the short novel of the German writer Thomas Mann and takes place in Venice in the first decade of the 1900’s.

Visconti, one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, has been with others a father of Neorealismo, known also for his maniacal carefulness of every little detail of scene reconstruction.

I remember an anecdote about this, that I had have read somewhere, maybe in an interview where an actor was talking about it. If you were shooting a scene for the movie, for example, with a woman who was dressing herself in front of a mirror, everything had to be real. The little jewel case on the dresser, that you couldn’t see what was inside it, to see the jewels, well, it had to contain real jewels inside it, and they had to be real jewels.

In a world in which things appear to us less true and more virtual and false, Visconti’s work and Neorealism can be not only a great art lesson, but also a great lesson of life.

 

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Italian neorealism

Luchino Visconti

Death in Venice (in English)

Morte a Venezia (Italian)

Alla ricerca di Tadzio

 

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Notice to readers
I have to inform the followers and the readers that because of some problems the publications will be suspended. Maybe they will be resumed in the future. Those who were still interested to write or share articles for the blog, still can send them to makeitalyyours [at] gmail [dot] com, so as to prepare an archive and have sufficient contributions to be published eventually in the future. Thank you very much for the attention of all the followers, of the readers and of those who have worked until now to make the blog grow.

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Elisa

by Stefania Bufano

Today I’m going to talk to you about one of our great Italian songwriters and singers.

Her name is Elisa. She was born in 1977 in Trieste, in North Italy, and become famous early, when she was nineteen years old. She usually writes her own songs, both the music and the lyrics, that often are like poems and she is very famous in Italy. For many years she usually wrote songs and sang them in English; in these lasts years she started to sing in Italian too, so that could be very good for you to hear and learn the language.

Elisa has a wonderful voice. She has also sang an old song which was sung by another great Italian singer (Mina, I’m going to talk about her, too), which she made in a very original way, because she isn’t just a singer and an interpreter, she’s more than that, she is an absolute artist.
Finally, she has written a lot of songs and has done duets with other Italian singers, for example with Andrea Bocelli, who I’m going to talk about too, as well as Mina and others.

So today I’ll share with you one song from her latest work. Enjoy!

 

L’anima vola
Lyric:

L’Anima Vola
Le basta solo un po’ d’aria nuova
Se mi guardi negli occhi
Cercami il cuore
Non perderti nei suoi riflessi
Non mi comprare niente
Sorriderò se ti accorgi di me fra la gente
Sì che è importante
Che io sia per te in ogni posto
In ogni caso quella di sempre
Un bacio è come il vento
Quando arriva piano però muove tutto quanto
E un’anima forte che sa stare sola
Quando ti cerca è soltanto perché lei ti vuole ancora
E se ti cerca è soltanto perché
L’Anima osa
E’ lei che si perde
Poi si ritrova
E come balla
Quando si accorge che sei lì a guardarla
Non mi portare niente
Mi basta fermare insieme a te un istante
E se mi riesce
Poi ti saprò riconoscere anche tra mille tempeste
Un bacio è come il vento
Quando soffia piano però muove tutto quanto
E un’anima forte che non ha paura
Quando ti cerca è soltanto perché lei ti vuole ancora
Quando ti cerca è soltanto perché lei ti vuole ancora
E se ti cerca è soltanto perché
L’Anima Vola
Mica si perde
L’Anima Vola
Non si nasconde
L’Anima Vola
Cosa le serve
L’Anima Vola
Mica si spegne

 

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Elisa

 

 

 

A poem by Roberto Carifi

by Stefania Bufano

A short poem. I know that poetry is the hardest to translate and understand in another language, but this one, that I have found a few months ago on YouTube, I loved very much.

There’s an actor, Domenico Pelini, who reads very clear and well, so I think you can hear a very good pronunciation and love the Italian language here.

The name of this important poet is Roberto Carifi; he isn’t very popular among  the Italians, but popular to Italians that usually read a lot of poetry. He was born in 1948 in Pistoia, a little and beautiful town near Florence. Carifi is particularly interested in philosophy and psychoanalysis.

This poem is a little sad… It talks about a love story which ended, perhaps too soon, in November…

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Lo sai, amore, che mi congedo in fretta,
che tocco terra con troppa leggerezza,
che ho un destino nelle tasche vuote
e un angelo spoglio che di sera
mi piange livido sul petto.
E passo sotto le mura di novembre
con un messaggio da portare
non so né a chi né dove,
scritto a singhiozzi come una preghiera,
e vo quasi fratello nella notte
guardando ombre sorvegliate,
certi lumini accesi
e l’occhio spento di anime perdute.

 

(note: “vo” means “vado”, I go)

 

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Roberto Carifi

 

Domenico Pelini YouTube

 

Pistoia