ITALIA: ULTIMO ATTO

Prologo Dov'Eri Tu Quel Giorno? Galleria Delle Grazie Negli Occhi D'Un Ribelle La Stagione Di Caino Luisa Ferida Bora In Compagnia Dei Lupi Pasionaria Cemento Armato Piazza Dei Cinquecento L'Estate Dei Silenzi Italia Ultimo Atto - Epilogo lyrics

Here at last "Italia: Ultimo Atto", IANVA's fourth release and eagerly awaited second full length album.
This brand new effort magnificently reaches the monumental through almost 70 enthralling minutes dragging the audience into a new dramatic journey.
For this occasion a very special play is going to be staged, featuring as a main character a whole nation: Italy.
The darkest, gloomiest, most troubled and controversial chapters of the last 60 years of Italian history as seen through the eyes of those who are on the side of the Eternally Defeated: the humble, the idealist, the honest men.
The moral and spiritual dissolution of a nation is narrated with the appeal and the accents typical of Neorealism and more than just a reference to some of the greatest and most influential Dissidents of that time: from Pasolini to Curzio Malaparte, from Pietro Germi to Giorgio Gaber, and the bittersweet touch of Pure Popular Music of past decades (Dalida, Battisti, Morricone).
13 tracks engraved in IANVA's usual flamboyant background, here, probably, at its most powerful and lyrical height!


Track by track:

ITALIA: ULTIMO ATTO

PROLOGO
DOV'ERI TU QUEL GIORNO?
GALLERIA DELLE GRAZIE
NEGLI OCCHI D'UN RIBELLE
LA STAGIONE DI CAINO
LUISA FERIDA
BORA
IN COMPAGNIA DEI LUPI
CEMENTO ARMATO
PASIONARIA
PIAZZA DEI CINQUECENTO
L'ESTATE DEI SILENZI
ITALIA: ULTIMO ATTO




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PROLOGO (Prologue)

One of Pasolini's bitternest and most prophetical chapters shapes this prologue, whose oracular precision shakes and already implies the dramatic denouements of the story we're going to tell.
Featuring Enrico Silvestrin (Italian actor and former MTV Europe VJ) as The Narrator.

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DOV'ERI TU QUEL GIORNO? (Where Were You That Day?)

September 8th 1943 – in the middle of the chaos, the dissolution and the dishonour of a state deserting a nation that is down on its knees, a voice comes out to claim the ultimate right for Dignity.
A long time opposer to the fascist regime shudders at the appalling sight of the easiness at which his fellow citizens jump on the winners' bandwagon, willingly turning themselves into persecutors, only to please the side they've been “hating” up to that time.

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GALLERIA DELLE GRAZIE

Autumn 1942 – Genoa suffers a heavy bombing that lasts a whole night and sweeps ancient and popular quarters away once for all, killing hundreds civilians and destroying an artistic legacy of inestimable value.
In the old Galleria Delle Grazie, used as air-raid shelter, dozens orphans and the nuns taking care of them face a horrible death among many other victims. But a survivor rises from the remains and debris with a brand new and different look in his eyes... A song to evoke those times when Italy was the country “importing Democracy”.
With Ms. Franca Lai (the most famous living Genoese folk singer) as a welcome guest in the role of the Voice Of The City.


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NEGLI OCCHI D'UN RIBELLE (In The Eyes Of A Rebel)

Any choice the aforementioned survivor will end up by making, it won't change the feeling and the spirit driving it. Obeying to a natural law, the Rebel revolts against the wrongs and the injustice surrounding him. Where the Revolutionary undergoes a decline, the Rebel remains. And, if necessary, he falls down with no regrets.


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LA STAGIONE DI CAINO (The Season Of Cain)

The musical re-enactment of a grey and bloody winter of civil war. Partisans and fascists, in many cases sons of the same mother, fight fiercely one against the other while the nation is on the verge of the ruin...
Per te leverò…


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LUISA FERIDA

Milan, 1945 – among the countless victims of that cruel season, there's also a beautiful and successful actress. In spite of her innocence and pregnancy, she's sentenced to death by partisans: symbols of the regime must be destroyed. Her last hours as seen as through the objective of an imaginary camera which will turn out to be the foresight of a killing gun....


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BORA *

11944/1948 – the tragedy of Italian descent people living in Istria and Dalmatia, the ethnic cleansing on Italy's doorstep, Italy's enthusiastic supporters of the “foiba** solution”, the censorship, the everlasting taboo. The country all Italians have inherited has more than just one root radicated in those Karst lands...

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bora_(wind)
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foiba


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IN COMPAGNIA DEI LUPI (In Company Of Wolves)

1952, near Rome – A brand “new” Italy has just begun. The republic is born but one can already perceive a sense of déja-vu in the air... VIPs, depraved noblemen, shady businessmen, ambitious girls, corrupted politicians, dark authorities.... All the grothesque and gloomy vaudeville as seen as through the weary eyes of a disgusted house-maid who must keep silent because she has a family to support..
A song inspired after the ill-famed “Montesi Affair”*, the first one of a series of more or less covered up Italian scandals...

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilma_Montesi
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,819571,00.html


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CEMENTO ARMATO (Reinforced Concrete)

The golden age of “Boom” (the so-called economic miracle which transformed the country in the span of a decade, from the late 50s to mid-60s ) is over.
The remains are but a devastating urban migration, cities invaded by concrete, the great internal migration. It's time for a dark season full of labour conflicts, of workers' movements, of strikes, of opposite political extremes... And it's time for the first bomb...


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PASIONARIA

1968/1980 – many young people supporting opposite extra-parliamentary movements and coveniently manipulated by shady “masters of puppets”, raise the level of the fight and spark the fire of civil war off again. A unique case in the whole Western world, this period* will last for more than a decade; the number of the girls involved in this revived civil war is quite striking...

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anni_di_piombo
(note that English Wikipedia entries are mostly written with an American perspective).


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PIAZZA DEI CINQUECENTO*

Rome, 1975 – Among the vast number of violent and everyday deaths one stands out because of its symbolic value, almost like a human sacrifice to the Spirit Of The Age: the Pasolini's murder.
Right after one of his most desperate, vehement and controversial articles, his voice is silenced forever...
Featuring the Italian rapper Duke Montana (of Truceklan Crew's fame) as the “Ragazzo Di Vita” (male hustler) in a short but incisive guesting.

* Piazza dei Cinquecento is a famous piazza in Rome where Termini station is situated; it's also a male-hustling place..

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L'ESTATE DEI SILENZI (The Summer Of Silence)

The “Estate Maledetta” (Bloody Summer) of 1980: Ustica's “mysterious” aircrash, Bologna train station massacre as seen as through the eyes of a young Mercy and his private memories... His first summer spent far away from home, the discovery of archaic feelings through an arousing sensuality, the endless discussions about politics... A swim in the beautiful “Etruscan” sea and the news about the most dreadful massacre in the history of the Italian Republic. A shattered country with its hands tied up....


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ITALIA: ULTIMO ATTO (Italy: Final Act)

The standardization of 80s and 90s has come to an end.
Italy is a disintegrated nation at both a cultrual and social level, under the total control of international hidden powers which are making the country bleeding to death, as always with the help of eager local servants. Paradoxically, Italy is on the forefront of avant-garde again: the forefront of a doomed West drowning in the darkness.