The Village Gate was a nightclub on the corner of Thompson and Bleecker Streets in Greenwich Village, New York. In its heyday, it also included an upstairs performance space, known as Top of the Gate. It is here that in 1986 Lucio Dalla held a famous concert, filmed in its entirety by Ambrogio Lo Giudice, tour producer with Pressing Line. Images that were thought to be almost entirely lost have now been found, restored and remastered in Dolby Atmos. Produced by Nexo Digital and Sony Music, and directed by Walter Veltroni, «DallAmeriCaruso. The Lost Concerto will arrive in theaters as a special event from November 20th to 22nd; at the same time, the album “DallAmeriCaruso – Live at Village Gate, New York 03/23/1986” will be available digitally (from December 1st in double CD and vinyl format).
«I have always been interested in the relationship with time, with its three-dimensionality, with memory – explains the director, a long-time friend of the Bolognese singer-songwriter who died in 2012 -. 37 years separate us from this concert, yet it vibrates with powerful relevance. Having rediscovered this live performance, having “regenerated” it in terms of audio quality, means being able to “eternise” it, handing it over to history in its integrity. I hope that in the theaters where it will be shown, people will experience it as a film worth singing.” In the documentary, Veltroni continues, «we then tried to reconstruct what was missing from the concert, Caruso and the legend that accompanies the song, which Lucio believed even though he knew it wasn’t true, and which he transformed into an epic song. He was fascinated by everything that hinges on the space between reality and fantasy, he was the most “Fellinian” of Italian singer-songwriters”.
It all starts from the story of Angelo Leonelli, bartender at the Hotel Excelsior where Dalla, returning from the States, is forced to stop due to a breakdown in his boat, off the coast of Sorrento. They assigned him the room where, in 1921, Enrico Caruso stayed. Leonelli tells him that the great tenor, ill and nearing his end, fell in love with a young woman to whom he teaches music in those rooms. Sitting at Caruso’s piano, in the hotel where he witnessed that love (whether real or invented), Dalla composed what is considered one of the masterpieces of modern music, with millions of copies sold worldwide.
80 years after the birth of Lucio Dalla (1943 – 2012), on the occasion of the discovery of the complete footage of his famous concert at the Village Gate in New York in 1986, “DallAmeriCaruso” arrives at the cinema only on 20, 21 and 22 November. The Lost Concert”, the new event film directed by Walter Veltroni and produced by Nexo Digital and Sony Music (list of theaters on nexodigital.it)
The 4K docu-film brings to the big screen the complete footage of Dalla’s 1986 concert at the Village Gate in New York, edited by Ambrogio Lo Giudice, Pressing Line tour producer, which was almost entirely lost, now found, restored and remastered in Dolby Atmos. In addition to reviving the music of that night in New York, it recounts the birth of “Caruso”, a song composed in Sorrento and published 37 years ago, on 10 October 1986, among the most beloved of Dalla’s career and of the entire history of Italian music
As Lucio Dalla himself explained, the genesis of «Caruso» takes place on a precise day: the one in which, when his boat broke down between Naples and Sorrento was towed to shore, Dalla went to sleep at the Hotel Excelsior where he the room where Enrico Caruso had stayed in 1921 was assigned. According to legend, the great singer, ill and at the end of his life, had fallen in love with a young woman to whom he taught music in that hotel in Sorrento. The hotel bartender at the time, Angelo Leonelli, told Dalla. Sitting at Caruso’s piano, in the hotel that was the stage of that heartbreaking love (whether true or legendary), the Bolognese singer-songwriter composes a song that brings together his pop imagination and the best melody of the Neapolitan and Italian tradition
In the film we find the objects and thoughts of those days and we retrace them in the company of the rock singer-songwriter and actress Angela Baraldi, who was on board the “Catarro” when the breakdown occurred, of Gaetano Curreri and Ricky Portera of Stadio, the owners of the Hotel Excelsior Guido Fiorentino and Lidia Fiorentino, the former concierge Antonino Galano, the music critic Gino Castaldo, the director Ambrogio Lo Giudice, the television author Nicola Sisto and Paolo Glisenti, spectator – as the archive images showed – of the evening of the Village Gate. To complete the story, the private and completely unpublished images of Lucio Dalla and the poignant interpretation of the pianist Danilo Rea
The concert album «DallAmeriCaruso – Live at Village Gate, New York 03/23/1986» (Sony Music) will be available from November 20th in digital format and from December 1st in double CD format, double black vinyl, lp version colored (exclusive to the Sony Music Store) and in Dolby Atmos
This is the tracklist of the album: DISC 1 – «Organized travels», «The last moon», «Anna and Marco», «Tutta la vita», «If I were an angel», «Cara » and «Washington». DISC 2 – ‘The evening of miracles’, ‘Dance, dance, dancer’, ‘Tango’, ‘Ask who the Beatles were’, ‘Futura’, ‘Starfish’, ‘The year that will come » and «4/3/1943»
«I loved Lucio very much – confides Veltroni -, this film is a way of showing my affection for him. He was a free spirit and, like all intelligent people, curious. His music, between tradition and modernity, mixes fado, Brazilian sounds, pop, Murolo… he was a cultured man, he liked to explore worlds. Perhaps this is why he loved America, a frontier land. I miss his imagination. Vincenzo Mollica had hosted a dialogue between Lucio and Fellini, they understood each other immediately, two wonderful liars, two inventors of fairy tales. It seems to me that this is a bit missing today. When they told me that an Indiana Jones had found the tapes of this concert, it seemed nice to give back to everyone’s eyes something that could never be seen again.”
2023-11-14 21:07:12
#Lucio #Dalla #Veltroni #Fellinilike #singersongwriter
