Football, theater and music are the protagonists of the highly anticipated event next weekend of the Autumn Festival with Federico Buffawell-known face on Sky, sports commentator and excellent storyteller. It will be funny at the Politeama Theater in Catanzaro with “The fútbol milonga”, a story with live music enriched by many video contributions, about some extraordinary Argentine footballers who have left a mark in the history of sportRenato Cesarini, Omar Sivori and Diego Armando Maradona.
Let’s start with the title “La milonga del fútbol”.
«It can be misleading that milonga is a musical genre. In reality here it is used as a place where tango is danced, there are three people on stage: the singer Mascia Foschi who is from Cesena but if you listen to her she sounds like an Argentinian, the pianist Alessandro Nidi and the narrator, who share stories about the ‘ 900 Argentine. Fútbol is an amazing vector because it allows us to tell the stories of three Argentinians, who are actually Italians. Cesarini was even born in Italy, Sivori was born in Argentina but the son of Italian emigrants, Maradona is Italian on his maternal side and Guarani-Indian on his paternal side, but all three played in Italy and Argentina, and I make this continuous journey round trip, between Italy and Argentina, but also between Europe and Argentina.”
Why did you choose these three names?
«The three represent three different Italys. Cesarini is a son of the emigration of the early twentieth century, he was born in Senigallia but in fact grew up in Buenos Aires and therefore represents the Italians who arrive there and this allows me to be able to talk about Italian emigration to Argentina, as it was, as it was they behaved, as they entered this new world very different from the United States. Sivori is the son of Italians, he was born in the 1930s in another Argentina, that of the pampas, and is therefore a different Argentine from Cesarini. Diego Armando Maradona was born in the slums of Buenos Aires where he has no electricity, there are no latrines, there is no drinking water: he is the son of that disinherited Argentina and the idea that a genius could be born there always excites me».
In any case, we are talking about three great champions of the past. Are there personalities of that level today, so strong, not only from a footballing point of view?
«No, not even vaguely. It is because the social value of football, which was once very strong, is different. Nowadays Italian clubs for cartel matches, such as Inter-Juve, put the third tier at 90 euros, this means that evidently the social impact that football once had no longer has, and also the vocation, I would say , of young Italians in football is a little different. Marco Tardelli told me that his mother burned his Pisa youth shirt, when he was thirteen, because she wanted him to study and get a diploma: today if you have a Marco Tardelli at home, you tell him that studying is the last problem what he has, to go and be a footballer and then we’ll see. A hundred years have not passed, only forty have passed: the world has changed a lot and the social value is different».
But there is still a need to tell these stories, and you have found a style, a formula in some way, which appeals more to the public, to the spectators.
«I would not know. I don’t have all this knowledge: I think that whoever is called to do something like this has his own style that represents him a little, how he experienced it, how old he is, what he saw. I can’t think of anything more flattering for a human being, other than health, than being paid to talk about your passion. What you hear is what I feel about this phenomenon: talking about a world, the Argentine one, where, rightly, they declare that the game was invented by the English, but they did something more important, they invented love for football, which in my opinion is truly sacrosanct, gives us a particular pleasure precisely in sharing it with an audience that knows that these things will be talked about. I don’t have to do Shakespeare, I don’t have to do early 20th century theater, or Pirandello. I have to tell stories that I can share with the public».
What component does music have on stage in this story?
«Let’s say it’s the rhythm section of the show, and I lean on the music. In many cases I translate tangos, because they are often in Lunfardo which is a Grammelot language created in Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 20th century, which draws from all dialects: Calabrian and Piedmontese, for example, among themor they are not able to understand each other and therefore we need a language for everyone. And then you take a little here and a little there and out comes this wonderful grammelot of words that don’t exist, but which fit right there, in this place out of the ordinary. And creating a country on these foundations, where football and tango grow together, and which distinguish it around the world, make Argentina a passionate place like no other in the world, I believe.».
It’s not his first time in Catanzaro. What relationship does it have with this city?
«I’ve already been there at least five, six times, which is a lot for a Lombard: I’m flattered if we have 1400 spectators in Rome, if we have two sold-out shows at the Manzoni in Milan, if we have 900 spectators in Turin, but I care more about Catanzaro, to bring a story there to share. Because my super commentary partner Fulvio Tranquillo is not only originally from Calabria, from Pizzo Calabro, but his family lives in Catanzaro. A long time ago he took me to see this stadium uphill, which I think is the most inconvenient place in terms of parking, but it doesn’t matter, the important thing is the stadium. Among other things, a close collaborator of my director Federico Ferri, Caterina Santopolo, is also from Catanzaro: her father works at the Politeama theatre. As you can see, two phone calls are enough and you don’t know what comes together in my world…”.
The show “La milonga del fútbol” is part of the programming of this weekend of the Festival which has the title “Between East and West”, it is so varied. In fact he tells Lucio Dalla And Maradonathe great protagonists of Western music and sport on the one hand and Eastern cultures on the other.
Before the Milonga, the show “ will be staged at the Marca Museum at 6 pm4/3/1943… Lucio Dalla!”, the homage to the great Bolognese singer-songwriter brought on stage by Rocco Debernardis on the clarinet, Leo Binetti on the piano, and by the actor Cesare Bocci in the protagonist role. The lyrics are from Federica De Bernardis.
Sunday 27 October, instead an absolute novelty of the Festival: at 10 in the Biodiversity Park the maestro Vincenzo Bosco, student of Sathya Sai Babaa famous Indian master who later became his guru, will introduce us to the age-old art of yoga up close. The rediscovery of prana and inner energy through the practice of yoga is in fact the theme of the meeting “Barefoot on the grass”, divided into a first theoretical part, followed by a practical one Hatha yoga.