A strange match not too strange that Giorgio Panariello and Marco Masini will play on August 5 at the Capo Peloro arena, as part of the program «Messina city of music and events». It will be that the two of them have known each other for decades, since they frequented the Tuscan underworld, that of private TVs, Carlo Conti, Leonardo Pieraccioni. «Marco – Giorgio remembers him well – was a guest with us. He was already an established singer. He arrived in the wake of collaborators… I saw the first mobile phone from him. A Nokia with an antenna that was called a mobile phone because it was a 15th-century piece of furniture that you carried with you. Then we also met in everyday life, went on vacations together. There, going further, you realize that the person behind the singer is funny, witty, despite the songs that can always make him look desperate. And everyone should know that.”
So… is Panariello more dramatic as a comedian or Masini more comical as a singer?
Marco Masini: “There is no one or the other in absolute terms. In life you have to be both, live depth and lightness. Giorgio, like me, has experienced great successes but also enormous pains. To overcome them you must have an open mind at 360°, I think this is the secret of our union, we brought it to our show. Whether they are words or notes… same attentive gaze, different points of view».
In this show who invited whom?
George Panariello: «It was born from my idea, after years of solitude I said to myself… I want to do something different, I need a singer! I asked here and there, but they were all busy, there was no way. Masini had freed himself, he was the only one who said yes to me.’
So Marco is not the first choice…
George Panariello: “No, it’s the fourth. In the end, however, it was the right choice. The public won’t be bored because I’ll do all my comedy bits and then, while Marco sings, I’ve organized a bingo with rich prizes and cotillions».
Marco Masini: “However, he didn’t say that he sings too, nor that we had to spend the entire budget earmarked for special effects to buy a 15,000-euro autotune and make Giorgio sing, so that his voice can compete with mine.”
What show will it be? How will Panariello and Masini cross paths?
George Panariello: «For example, there will be a meeting between Zero and Masini. Renato who will go to look for Marco to tour together, relegating him to just one song. Or there is a moment in which Marco sings Cinderella in love and I intervene with my way of seeing fairy tales, which are much more evil than they have always been told to us. There will be an unpublished work by Masini in which I too will sing, which is all worth listening to…”.
Panariello vs. Masini. Will it be a challenge?
Marco Masini: “Certain! The challenge is the way to express extremes to the fullest, but then life is mostly lived in the middle. To tell it, you just need to love it.”
Will the experiment continue?
“People will tell us. It is never said that what entertains us then also entertains the public. If you have nothing to do on August 5, come and see. Indeed, even if you have something to do, do one thing, come all the same».