Between italiotes and clichés, the Virtuosi di San Martino narrate the average Italian man through a masterful show of theater-song
It is increasingly difficult, nowadays, to leave the theater fully satisfied with what was experienced in the hall thanks to the artists on stage, but the show proposed by the Virtuosi di San Martino falls into one of these cases.
Synonymous of guarantee of good music and pungent show, but at the same time fun, the Neapolitan ensemble did not disappoint the expectations of its audience even this time. At the Sancarluccio Theater in Naples, the formation composed of Roberto Del Gaudio (voice and texts), Federico Odling (cello and music), Vittorio Ricciardi (flutes), Antonio Gambardella (violin) and Carmine Terracciano (guitar) performed in the show scrapi, delighting viewers in the hall.
The piéce will be on stage until the 27 April and it proposes to tell, to dismantle and, why not, to mock the man Italiot medium, through texts and music composed by the same Del Gaudio and Odling. In fact, the whole show is nothing but a continuous telling of the hypocrisies, the contradictions, the bigotry, the superficiality, the frivolities of the average Italian.
Medium Italian that contains a whole series of figures that are none other than wreckage, imprisoned in their cages made of common places, of which they feed and which they themselves continue to feed. But also characters waiting to be scrapped, in the hope that someone will proceed.
The show opens with a short monologue by Del Gaudio, an irreverent discourse on the mediocrity which, over time, has also involved the cabaret, now become trivial and not fun. Hence, the need to try a tribute to the cabaret proper, fine and fun. That's why the first of the tributes goes to the great Dario Fo, author of the well-known song “Canto degli Italioti”, which already from the title suggests what the continuation of the show will be.
From this starting point, the public can begin to know those who will gradually become the protagonists of the scene, always through the theater-song of the Virtuosi di San Martino. We can thus meet the first of the protagonists: a hypocritical and corrupt politician, all intent in his sforzo democratic, through a passage full of unflattering allusions.
At this point, Del Gaudio wonders what could prevent this degradation that surrounds us, this rottamarsi? Surely the culturebut, as we all know, with culture you do not eat, not even going to university. Here, then, the second character to introduce himself, the Philosopher with nymphomaniac tendencies, well represents all those who out of boredom, not knowing what to do, decide to enroll in the faculty of philosophy, soon discovering that they have taken the road that will lead them to unemployment.
The story continues with other tributes to great artists of Italian music and art, such as Walter Valdi and the reference to his politician moderate and at the Game of Olives, oi Owls, with their "Tutti bini". It also continues with a lashing criticism of the health system, through the story of a primary solitary who makes care of little caring for the sufferings of patients.
The path is about to end and it does so masterfully with the fun "Long live women“, Decidedly male-dominated song; with a piece with a classic and traditional structure, also in the language that refers to the classic Neapolitan, but which describes current characters (such as the rich peasant from Palinuro, owner of "a hundred houses"); and a song about the inevitable cammorist which presents its own electoral program and which is enriched to the detriment of a state that does not exist.
We have now reached the gran finale, with one of the group's most criticized and beloved songs: Napule. A passage full of common places, among the worst, on Naples and the Neapolitans, with tragicomic references to the monnezza, rogue, to the unauthorized parking attendant and so on and so forth.
But also a passage that only those who live and know Naples well can afford to write and submit, in order to scrap the "Naples understood as a common place, as a media center (therefore false) of the ill deal "because "the real Italian malfeasance starts from Milan and travels to Brussels ", as Del Gaudio himself wisely stated in a recent interview.
