“Bono’s Surrender: A Love Letter to Naples and U2”

“Can I sing it again?” he asks Good voice. He doesn’t have time to finish the sentence, because the 1,400 spectators who crowd the stalls and boxes of the St. Charles of Naples answer him in chorus. They weren’t expecting anything else.

Thus the more militant voice of the U2 attacks for the second time Return to Surriento, shot by an operator with a shoulder camera. The song is a tribute to his father Bob (“A very good tenor”) and to that Sorrento Lodge where the two met for years, on Sundays, to drink beer. Bono’s Neapolitan is quite lame and it takes a lot of courage to sing Ernesto De Curtis’s classic right under Vesuvius. But courage is not lacking in Bono that in Stories of surrender signs his surrender to demons and weaknesses. And the spectators give up: at the last note they stand up to applaud him at the end of a two-hour show between songs and (many) memories.

Saturday 13 May in the oldest opera house in Europe was the last date of the theatrical tour, which started in the autumn and saw Paul David Hewson alone on stage, without U2. In the audience the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano, Nicoletta Mantovaniwidow Pavarotti, with her daughter Alicethe DJ and producer Martin Garrix. The public, as for every date, was asked to wear clothes for special occasions: men in black and women in evening dress. Mobile phones are strictly prohibited, sealed in bags because the show was born from the book Surrender, 40 songs, one story — it’s going to be a movie. Two small armchairs in one corner, a table and four chairs in the centre. In the background are projected drawings depicting skyscrapers, the faces of the parents, the yellow cottage where U2 rehearsed.

On stage, Gemma Doherty (harp and keyboards), Kate Ellis (cello) and producer Jacknife Lee (music director and electronic percussion). When Bono arrives, the first of many standing ovations is triggered. Round glasses, striped waistcoat, dark jacket: “Hello, welcome – he says in Italian – Naples, the city of champions”. The show is a declaration of love. To the wife Ali and to the four children (“They saved me from myself”); to U2, companions of musical raids: Larry («I thought: his indoor thunder will bring down the walls of the house»), The Edge (“He could play what he wanted”), Adam (“Rock devotee. He couldn’t play, but I couldn’t sing”).

Bono looks like an experienced actor, he jumps on the table, moves chairs, imitates characters. The scene in which the quartet presents itself to the «Winston Churchill of rock», the manager Paul McGuinness («Did God call you to tell you to stop? Can you tell him that you have a tour in the US?»), plays himself and his father during the laconic encounters in the pub.  «I told him: he called me Pavarotti. And he: he must have got the wrong number». Life and death are intertwined, as when in 2016, his “eccentric heart” risked stopping. And then the tributes to Ramonesa big Luciano («Thank you master»), the memory of Lady D. Scattered between one story and another, sometimes only hinted at (Iris, for the mother), the songs dressed again.

No it’s the band, my Vertigo, City of Blinding Lights, With Or Without You they don’t lose power. There’s a good chunk of Bono’s life in Stories of surrender, Sunday Bloody Sunday e Pride introduce the humanitarian commitment. Talk about meeting with John Paul II: “A goalkeeper in his youth who became a scorer. It was ours Victor OsimhenTO”. They come relentlessly Desire e Beautiful Day. “I have to surrender – she says – to the songs they tell me”.