Gianmaria Testa - “My invincible Don Quixote”

On November 19 and 20 at the Teatro Sociale di Como, the show written by Erri De Luca, titled “Chisciotte e gli Invincibili”, was staged; the tour then continued for more than a month in theatres across Italy. After Gianmaria Testa's Canadian dates, “Chisciotte e gli Invincibili” will return to the stage on March 15 and 16 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, will continue on March 17 and 18 at the Teatro Verdi in Florence, and will conclude, after also stopping in Padua, Salerno and Asti among others, in Genoa, where the show will run from April 4 to 9 at the Teatro Duse.

Music and poetry are, at times, a destination and, at other times, a starting point for reflections and points of view on the reality that surrounds us. Besides the opening prologue, the show unfolds across three tableaux (love, war and imprisonment). But who are the Invincibles, and why start from Don Quixote? All of this is explained to us by Gian Maria Testa himself. Besides discussing the theatrical show, in this interview Testa also talks about his packed schedule of concerts (he makes it clear it's even too packed…) and gives us a glimpse of some of his upcoming projects.

Last night I was lucky enough to see the show; if you had to describe it to someone who hasn't seen it, in your own words, how would you do it?

Well, I wouldn't even know how to call it a show, really… because there's nothing spectacular about it, as you saw. Erri De Luca has this fascination with Don Quixote, Cervantes's character, and the idea—which I think is brilliant—is this: the Invincibles aren't those who always win, but those who never let themselves be defeated by their defeats. Those who always win are the winners, and winners are a very fashionable category of people these days, but they're also the ones who, when they fall, need cocaine to survive—so they're winners and losers at the same time. The Invincibles, on the other hand, are those who never give up, even when they lose badly. Erri has identified certain categories of people who fit this description. For example, migrants are Invincibles—those who, as has happened again even these very days, set off from North Africa, from Kurdistan, from Albania, to come and seek some kind of salvation here. And nothing can stop them, neither the laws of the state nor drowning in the Mediterranean. No wall will ever be able to stop them because, as Erri rightly says: “Li muove la disperazione e vanno a piedi”, and so no one can stop them—they are invincible. And so there are other categories too; this is the story of the invincibility of a part of humanity, starting from this idea of Don Quixote, who is indeed the king of the Invincibles, despite always being defeated.

The Invincible Ones, then, are the migrants, but also the prisoners and the lovers. One room in the show is even dedicated to those who took their own lives. How much emotion is there, for a longtime De André devotee , in singing "Preghiera in Gennaio" from a theatre stage?

Well, there's enormous respect involved. I was actually hesitant about it, but Erri really insisted that we include that song. I was very hesitant because I have great respect for any song of that calibre, and I'm never sure I can do it justice, render it for what it's worth. Then I told myself it was set within such a beautiful text that it was probably worth it, so I sing it, but always with a bit of anguish. I hope the emotion comes across. But I sing it with some apprehension, out of respect for whoever wrote it — it truly is a masterpiece.

During the show there's talk of the need to wash our eyes with a bit of "Quixotic" eye drops — if a lot of us actually did that, what do you think the results would be? Is perhaps not wanting to do it a form of self-protection?

Yes, but what Erri says is genuinely interesting — by now we're used to, say, media wars. The first time this happened was during the first Gulf War, Bush senior's war, where we watched the bombing on television. We watched it and it looked like a film, we were involved as spectators. And there's a lovely passage where Erri says: "I believe the word indifference doesn't mean not caring, but rather failing to distinguish between being a spectator and being actually involved." When there's a war somewhere in the world, we're all involved, there's no getting around it; you can't want globalization and then opt out whenever something you don't like happens. In that sense, I don't know how much would really change, but if those eye drops existed somewhere, I'd buy them and hand them out to plenty of people. I don't know what would change, but it certainly wouldn't do any harm.

…Also because media wars, as we've unfortunately seen recently too, only show us what it's convenient for us to see…

Yes, they only show us what they want us to see, and then it's an escalation of horror — who knows how much more we still don't know. But we even get used to the fact that every day in Iraq, for example, there's a suicide bomber causing carnage and people dying. Yesterday, say, a hundred people, the day before thirty. By now it's become routine, it's become something normal, and that's exactly why we'd need those eye drops.

You've just come back from your first tour of the United States. How did it go? (The American tour kicked off on November 1st at New York's historic Joe's Pub, before taking in Chicago, Cleveland and Los Angeles)

Well, it went really well. If you asked me why, I couldn't tell you. Maybe because, all things considered, song is a fairly universal language. I'm talking about the Western world, obviously, since I know nothing, for instance, about songs from China or Japan. But within the Western world, song is a pretty universal language. So it went very well. I set off somewhat prejudiced, and instead I came back with a wonderful impression of humanity; New York in particular struck me very favourably, precisely because of that mixing of races — all in all, I felt quite at home there too.

To recap: United States, Europe, Canada. Did you imagine, early on, that your music would take on such an international dimension?

No, but it happened fairly by chance, because I made my first record in France, so I started out from Paris, not from Milan or Rome.

Paris more easily projects things outward, both within Europe and beyond it — more easily than Rome does, for instance.

So partly it's down to that. Then again, not only did I not imagine it, but I made my first record at 36, and before that I wrote for myself, never thinking it would interest anyone at all. Now this has happened, fine, but I have to say it also seems a bit too much, a little excessive; I'd like to scale the whole thing down somewhat. Because what's truly exhausting is the travelling, and above all there's also a risk of losing that kind of everyday life which is, ultimately, what allows me to write; I certainly couldn't do what Dylan does with his "never ending tour". I really need to go home and quickly get back to a normality that suits me, and get out of the concert situation — lights, amplifiers — pretty fast.

Do you still feel "Extra Muros" in Italy?

No, but I never actually felt that way — that's just how I've been portrayed. The problem is a technical one, and it's this: if in Italy you don't appear on TV or get played on the radio — which holds true in many countries, but in Italy it seems even more so, largely "thanks" to the overbearing rise of so-called commercial television — if you don't appear, partly because you refuse to do what's asked of you, partly because you simply don't get asked, the process of reaching a lot of people is much slower and relies on word of mouth, so you have to be patient and wait. But that suits me just fine, I'm not interested in having crowds; of course, like everyone, I'm gratified by applause, but it's certainly not the single most important thing. I've been able to afford this outlook partly thanks to having a day job — I don't need to live off my songs. Now, as it happens, I'll be leaving that job because I can't keep doing it any more, but it has helped me precisely in this sense: I play music, but I also have a job — if people show up, great, if they don't, it doesn't matter, it's fine.

I mentioned "Extra Muros" not by chance, because a remastered version of "Extra Muros" has just come out — are you happy with the result?

Look, unfortunately the record suffers from this problem: when you record it, you give the best you have up to that precise moment. However, personally, I would have re-sung Extra Muros. The songs still resonate with me, of course, because I only release songs that resonate with me, but as time passes you hear them differently and you'd do them differently. It wasn't possible to re-record the vocals, because it was an album that, like all the others, had been recorded live in the studio; so there was no possibility of using the instrumental tracks and singing over them again, and it was only remastered, meaning a technological clean-up was done. Yes, I'm satisfied, but for me it's a dated record, especially since in Italy it had practically never come out, and they decided to release it.

The booklet for Other Latitudes featured a beautiful preface by Erri De Luca — how did your friendship, and now your collaboration, come about?

Yes, he'd called me a Cyrano in those lines... that's how it started. I was, and still am, an enthusiastic reader of Erri's, I really like his style, I like the themes he touches on. Then I happened to do something with Marco Paolini and Mario Brunello at the Olimpico in Vicenza, we came together to put on a charity show. On that occasion we asked ourselves what could possibly unite a storyteller, a theatre actor like Marco, a great cellist like Mario, and a songwriter. And we discovered that one of the things that united us was Erri and the things Erri wrote. That evening Marco had read some of De Luca's work on stage. And at the end of the evening we decided to try to involve him, and that's what happened. We contacted Erri, he let himself be drawn in, and the result was a show called Attraverso, which besides De Luca also features Gabriele Mirabassi. We first performed this Attraverso for Mantova Letteratura, and in Mantua I asked him: "Listen Erri, why don't you come up with something we can do together?" And he showed himself willing, and that's how the Don Quixote piece came about. In the meantime, our friendship has grown, so now it all feels natural, but until three years ago I was quite in awe of De Luca, as I always am with people who say the things I wish I were capable of saying myself.

In the midst of all these commitments between theatre and your solo concerts, have you also found time to write new songs?

Yes, I'm stubbornly pursuing an idea for a concept album, precisely about modern-day emigration; I actually perform one song from it in this show, it's the second one. I recently looked again at Pellizza da Volpedo's painting Il quarto stato, imagining that at the start of the last century there was this forward march, looking towards a kind of rising sun of the future — there's hope in that painting. Now it seems to me that this whole march has turned negative, and so I wanted to make a record on this theme. And I'm, more or less — or I tell myself this to keep my spirits up — about halfway there. But who knows, maybe the second half will take me five years.

As an admirer of both of you, when will we see you on stage again together with Marco Paolini?

With Marco we actually have a meeting coming up soon to get back to work on this Attraverso project, and we need to talk it through a bit. So I think so, yes — that we'll do something together in the summer, at least that's the intention.

(Como, November 20, 2005)

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