Franco Battiato

On Saturday, January 19th, Franco Battiato kicked off in Bergamo the promotional tour for his twenty-eighth studio album, "Open Sesame". After the Italian dates, running between January and March, he'll play in Spain, France, Britain, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. This opening show took place at the Teatro Creberg, a squat structure not unlike a lying-down Michelin Man, roughly twice the size of your average parish cinema. All fifteen hundred seats were taken.

With the usual, if slight, delay, the lights go down, followed by the announcement of a showcase from Davide Ferrario, guitarist in Battiato's band: three somewhat pretentious songs, sung while alternating between electric guitar and keyboard (over a fairly substantial backing track).

After a few more minutes' pause, Battiato's concert gets underway. The band is backed by the Nuovo Quartetto Italiano; a screen behind the stage set, illuminated platforms, Battiato seated on a bulky bench covered by an enormous rug.

The first part is dedicated to nine tracks from the new album, including: "Testamento", accompanied by the video released to coincide with the start of the tour; "Eri con me", the first song written (with Sgalambro) for Alice since 1982, released by both artists on their respective albums last year, with tragicomic lyrics (“Ciò che deve accadere, accadrà! […] Eri con me, ma io non ero con te/ Sei con me, ma io non sono con te/ Ero con te, ma tu non eri con me” – in the age of text messages, certain mishaps can easily be avoided); "Quand'ero giovane" (introduced with the wise declaration that he doesn't believe in youth worship), "Passacaglia"; "Aurora", inspired by Ibn Hamdis.

After this first phase, Battiato announces a return to songs from his earlier albums. So we hear the subdued prayer of "L'ombra della luce", followed by "Danza" (from the work "Telesio"), with footage showing the dancing holograms from the performances at the Rendano in Cosenza. As if the intensity reached so far weren't enough, along comes nothing less than "Lode all'inviolato" (unfortunately the only track present from "Caffé de la Paix"), accompanied by images of saints and philosophers, then "Giubbe Rosse" and "Mesopotamia" (with the video in which the man himself indulges one of his great passions: hopping about).

Then comes the solemn, unsettling "Il mantello e la spiga", marred however by a naive film (endless lava and lapilli) and by moments where Battiato's vocals are momentarily drowned out by the instruments. Right after, though, comes the surprise twist: "Nomadi", an intense poem set to music written by Juri Camisasca for Giuni Russo, then handed over for production reasons to Alice (who, wisely, has never complained about it) and shortly after recorded by Battiato himself.

This is the most impactful stretch of the concert: "La cura" is a given, then the sacred lyricism of "Nomadi" is echoed again with "E ti vengo a cercare" (which simply has to be sung Moretti-style), then "La stagione dell'amore" with the silhouettes from the dance routines that made the video's fortune, even though Battiato is far from displaying "the unnatural grace of Nijinsky" up there.

After the applause, a microphone stand appears: the band is still introducing "Bandiera bianca", in a medley with "Up Patriots To Arms", and Battiato is already on his feet. After a populist declaration (thanking today's political class for inspiring the song that follows), "Inneres Auge" begins, revealing more than one shade of meaning: while the first part of the lyrics borders on glibness, the second alternates a reference to René Guénon's "Il simbolismo della croce" ("The horizontal line pushes us towards matter/ The vertical one towards the spirit"), whose coherence with the text is reinforced by the final verse (“Ma quando ritorno in me/ Sulla mia via, a leggere e studiare/ Ascoltando i grandi del passato/ Mi basta una sonata di Corelli/ Perché mi meravigli del creato”), which restates a recurring theme in Battiato's thinking in recent years: better to diminish oneself before greatness than to puff oneself up in the face of iniquity.

Still seated on the rug (flying, if not literally), he announces a triptych of experimental pieces from the '70s, to honour the loyalty of the hardcore fans who have followed him for four decades: he has a theremin brought to him (complaining about the weight of the contraption; the stagehand who didn't bring it close enough was reportedly whipped backstage by Sgalambro afterwards…). And so come "Da Oriente a Occidente", "Aria di rivoluzione" and "Propriedad Prohibida", regarding which he complains about the unpaid royalties from TG2 Dossier, which has been using it as its theme tune for years.

He gets back on his feet for the encore (without the traditional walk-off and return to the stage): affable up to this point, he turns a touch showy and, with the ease of a crooner, wielding the microphone stand almost like Freddie Mercury, welcomes the most excitable fans who have gathered to jump around at the foot of the stage. And so begins the energetic triple bill of "L'Era del Cinghiale Bianco"-"Cuccurucucù"-"Voglio vederti danzare".

It's clear these are the encores, but the little trick of staying on stage before performing them raises the hopes of the most fervent admirers, who call for a return to the stage: but on the screen the cinematic end credits cruelly roll, with the title track of the new album playing underneath.

The concert ran close to two hours, but was so intense that it felt even longer. A generous show, delivered by convincing musicians and a class act at its centre.

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