Literary critic Raffaello Ramat, professor of literature at the University of Florence and a partisan in August, 1943 writes: “It got to be a situation I no longer know whether tragic or grotesque, of a block of millions and millions of men who agreed to obey a bunch of thieves and adventurers, knowing that they were adventurers and thieves, and they could not hope for release if not by forces outside of themselves. (…) It must be clearly stated that one class above all is responsible for this general demoralization: the writers. I invite young people to re-read newspapers of previous years and to collect the pages of cowardice – not to laugh at them, but rather to weep over them.”
What words were written, and what “music” was played during the fascist Ventennio? What were the roles of the official press, and of the clandestine one? Is it granted to artists, in the name of artistic autonomy, to be indifferent to what is going on around them? How did intellectuals in our country react, or accommodate, as Italy and Europe produced what was a catastrophe of consciousness even before it was political? What music was being played while the “racial laws” were being promulgated?
Monica Bacelli (singer), Luisa Prayer (pianist) and Fabrizio Gifuni (actor) deal with this subject – each with their own instrument – bringing together original historical materials: newspaper articles, private diaries, historical documents, telegrams, music and songs. From Gobetti and Montanelli, to Toscanini and Mascagni, through Tosti, Pizzatti, Gadda, Calamandrei, Casella, Respighi and Castelnuovo Tedesco.
For the Day of Remembrance, Bacelli, Prayer and Gifuni – artists of their own times – ask themselves the meaning of their own work, in the past and the present, giving rise to a concerted action against indifference, to renew the value and the meaning of experiencing memory.