Giovanni Sparano

The seventeenth edition of the Barezzi Festival has just wrapped up, bringing Blonde Redhead, Okkervil River, Micah P. Hinson, Jesus And Mary Chain and many others to the stages of theatres in and around Parma. During the event, OndaRock caught up with its founder, Giovanni Sparano, to talk about its origins and the decisive "seed" that was Franco Battiato, about the cultural context surrounding the festival, and about a few organizational details.

Hi Giovanni, we know you as the founder of the Barezzi Festival, an event now firmly established in Emilia, more precisely in and around Parma. You're originally from Campania, and you started out as an innkeeper and bistro owner in Eboli. What brought you to Parma, and then led you to create a music festival?

I got into the world of theatre by chance, after reading an ad, and from there I started working as an extra in a semi-professional capacity, which sparked my passion for opera, and for Giuseppe Verdi in particular. When I opened Gran Caffè dei Marchesi in Parma in 2005, there was a need to bring in some music, so we came up with a competition named after Antonio Barezzi, Verdi's patron, in which we gave participants the chance to perform a cover of the composer alongside two original tracks. Back then there was no social media, just Myspace, and it was wonderful, because we still ended up receiving a huge number of physical demos.

The selections took place at the bar, with a jury made up of Bernardo Lanzetti, former member of Pfm, and Alessandro Nidi, who had arranged "A casa di Ida Rubinstein" by Giuni Russo — fairly professional figures. The bands came from all over Italy; among the participants were Famelica, the project of Dimartino, Lorenzo Kruger of Nobraino, and many other very talented artists. Among the covers you could find "Addio, del passato" from "La traviata", as well as more "pop" choices, like "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" and so on. Ahead of the final, we asked the mayor of Busseto to provide the stage and the sound and lighting service, and my partner Laura Fantastico and I put up a thousand euros of our own money for the first prize, which was won by Django's Fingers. So, preliminary rounds at the bar and the final right beneath the monument to Verdi. That evening was pivotal, because seeing Busseto, the square and the theatre, I thought of turning it into a festival — that is, pairing the competition with a broader program tied to figures from different backgrounds who had engaged with classical music.

What struck you about Antonio Barezzi as a patron, beyond his connection to Giuseppe Verdi?

I was struck enormously by this figure because of an example I think is emblematic: when Verdi came of age, he was sent to Milan to study at the conservatory, failed and was rejected. Back in Busseto, Barezzi kept believing in him, helped him secure a scholarship by recommending him to Giulio Ricordi, and sent him back to Milan, where he went on to become the most celebrated and performed opera composer in the world. This really struck me, because without this man we wouldn't have Giuseppe Verdi as we know him today.

In the early years of the festival I looked a lot into this man's story, I loved telling people about this figure who had devoted himself to Verdi almost like a second father, and who was completely unconventional: he studied, he could play about a dozen instruments as a self-taught musician, and yet he wasn't even a musician himself — he was an authority. At that time in Busseto there were two factions, a progressive one, led by him, and the ecclesiastical one. So Verdi was actually mocked a bit for this, you could say he was a kind of "punk" of his era. He married Barezzi's daughter, who died of illness, and later fell in love with the famous soprano Giuseppina Strepponi. In the nineteenth century, a union with a woman of the stage was grounds for gossip, since it was considered dissolute, so he had to face that kind of criticism too; he had a troubled relationship with Busseto and its inhabitants. Here too, Barezzi was the only enlightened one who thought differently from the rest of the town. When Verdi became famous, he repaid all the money his patron had lent him, but the bond they had built was never truly broken.

Given your fascination with these historical figures, why did you decide to create a festival of contemporary music rather than "classical" music?

I ended up in theatre myself by chance, so I asked myself why artists should have to wait for some fortuitous, random turn of events in their lives when they could already be making use of these venues. The idea was to bring "the other music" into the theatre. In his day, Verdi was of course a contemporary artist, and when he depicted the customs of that era in "La traviata" he was booed, because people didn't recognize themselves in that portrayal. We wanted to bring together contemporary music, representing Verdi and that "punk" spirit that had partly defined him, with the context of making music in a theatre in Parma, and the figure of Barezzi, evoking that kind of partnership.

What or who gave Barezzi its definitive imprint, including in terms of style, as we know it today?

The seed was undoubtedly Franco Battiato. I've talked a lot about Verdi and Barezzi, but the most important thing I thought of on the night of the competition in Busseto, regarding this cross-genre festival I wanted to create, was to write to Battiato and pitch him the idea. I wrote to the email address on his website and he replied to me personally. He told me he was interested and had liked the proposal: I had asked him to pay tribute to Giuni Russo, whose mentor he had been (a kind of "Barezzi" figure), since she had died not long before. Incidentally, Franco had a connection to Parma, because he had staged his first opera, "Genesi", there, so there was already a relationship with classical music, with opera. He left me a note that said: "Come visit me in Milo", without giving a date. He got back in touch about three months later with a date, and Laura and I went to see him at Villa Grazia. To me he was an absolute idol and it didn't feel real.

How long did you stay there?

A whole afternoon. He had this very British manner about him, but paired with a very Sicilian warmth — he kept his distance while still embracing you at the same time. Thinking of Battiato, I expected to find "the shaman", but instead he turned out to be one of the funniest and sharpest people I'd ever met. I remember two things in particular from that afternoon. The first is that he introduced us to Anohni Hegarty (Anohni and the Johnsons) — at the time nobody in Italy knew who she was — he took us into a room with a Mac and blasted "You Are My Sister" (from the album "I'm A Bird Now"). And then, after showing us the whole house, he took us to the place where he liked to listen to music, an old "palmento", formerly used for pressing olives, which had been connected to a hot spring. Beyond that, he decided to come to Barezzi for free, and when we got back to Parma he told us he was happy to do this for three hundred people, that he wanted to show the documentary he had made about Giuni Russo and then sing a few songs, asking us for the occasion for a small accompanying string quartet. We then started thinking about the preparations to have everything ready for him: having run the first year of the festival out of a bar, I had no experience whatsoever with this sort of thing...

It was 2008, so you went from running the bar straight to Franco Battiato...

Exactly, and I made an absurd fool of myself, because what I had waiting for Battiato in Busseto was terrible. From that idyllic meeting in Milo, we went to a stage worthy of a village fair: there wasn't even a stage mixer, and we hadn't arranged for a sound engineer, so he kept going back and forth between the stage and the mixer, mixing his own sound himself. He literally stepped into the role of his own sound engineer, setting aside any snobbishness that other artists might have shown — and who would almost certainly have walked out immediately, and not without reason. Following this event, once we were back in Parma, the official news of Battiato's appearance was the "yes" that gave the festival institutional legitimacy — otherwise it probably wouldn't have taken off the way it did. We reached a turning point, and from there we started getting funding; the rest of the story was built edition after edition.

Over these seventeen years, of this whole story and these ideas, how much has actually reached the artists themselves? Some of them will surely have heard of Verdi, but what's their relationship with this context, which perhaps, from their own experience, is completely distant, both geographically and historically? And if there's perhaps an anecdote about it.

Certainly, through this festival we've given Parma some very different experiences — by now 50% of the audience expects it, because they see it almost as a mark of quality. As for the artists, among the likes of Philip Glass, Fontaines D.C., Anna Calvi and so on, they perhaps don't look too deeply into the history, but they do experience something different — they sense in Barezzi and in those seven days of the festival a completely different energy, because they're in a theatre and are welcomed in a particular way. I remember the only artist who came essentially for this very reason was Rufus Wainwright, because he's an opera buff, a huge fan of Giuseppe Verdi. He specifically asked to sleep the following day in the room where Verdi had lived and died (at the Grand Hotel et de Milan), and then we spent a day together in the car — I took him to Villa Sant'Agata and to the Verdi Museum at Casa Barezzi. One of the most beautiful memories of my life is singing the entire second act of "Il trovatore" with him in the car, in this Renault 4, entirely from memory. It was an incredible moment of pure "Verdi-ness".

Was there any artist who, taking part in the festival, became curious despite knowing nothing at all about Verdi's music or the operatic tradition in general?

Yes, Brian Auger for example — after his appearance he wrote to me saying that thanks to this festival he had developed a passion for it and had listened to "Il trovatore", "Rigoletto"...

If you had to imagine someone who could perfectly fit this narrative, are there artists you can picture, beyond personal taste, as perfect for this setting, whom you perhaps haven't managed to book yet?

If I had to think of a completely different kind of language, I'd say James Bay, but I believe Bob Dylan is really the pinnacle of this discourse, just as Leonard Cohen would have been, who sadly will never be able to take part. For everything he's done, Dylan is the bard of an era, embodying the 20th century and its art, poetry and music.

So do you always want to give the festival this contemporary edge? And given the social theme running through the whole story, Barezzi, beyond being a music lover, was also a philanthropist, to the extent that he financed Verdi. So I imagine you're a sound enterprise from a financial standpoint too — there are so many festivals in Italy that struggle to stay afloat in one way or another...

Yes, absolutely, it's a virtuous enterprise, and just like what Barezzi used to do, I like to always keep "my ears to the ground," paying attention to the contemporary scene and to new acts.

Have you ever thought about opening up to projects that aren't strictly musical, still within this context?

There have been many, and we keep some of them going, like Barezzi Lab, which essentially reworks the original competition. It's been revived over the last three years, in a different form: we invite four or five emerging artists to perform two of their own songs plus one by Verdi, and it takes place in the morning with schools, with Diego Sorba playing the role of Antonio Barezzi. Within this talk, which follows its own narrative pacing, stories of broader patronage in society are told, then Diego talks with a band, for instance, and asks them why they chose a particular Verdi piece. It's an educational moment for high schools, where students listen to contemporary bands talking about classical music, with contributions from a musicologist in the audience.

A question that goes beyond the music, into the organizational side. You've confirmed that Barezzi is a virtuous enterprise, so is this a festival with real prospects for continued growth in the future?

It is virtuous, but it actually has little room to grow, because projects like this rest on three pillars: the first is public funding, the second is private funding, and the last covers grants and sponsors, which together roughly double the first figure. Unfortunately we still get too little attention, and in my opinion that's a shame, because after all we're talking about contemporary relevance with deep roots in the past — Barezzi is part of Italian history. We're talking about a historical figure who isn't perceived the way he should be, and maybe that's partly our fault too, because we don't manage to lay out the themes clearly enough in the various calls we apply to. In any case, beyond the projects themselves, what matters most is that the audience is always the first to welcome us and take an active part every time.

How much do you think this whole enterprise has been able to thrive because of the connection that exists, at least locally in Parma, between the city and Barezzi — a kind of self-celebration of the local area that then spread to music fans more broadly? If you had organized this kind of festival with the same narrative, starting from a historical figure but in a different setting from where they were born, would it have had the same future?

In my opinion, for a festival to work well it generally needs to have something to tell, and we have that, as well as the chance to engage with a significant audience base. Parma is just over an hour from Milan and Bologna, right in the heart of Europe, it has incredible venues and a figure of worldwide significance. If you go to the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the first thing performed is Verdi, just to give an example. In fact, there would be so many other projects that could be developed internationally around his figure. What I'd somewhat expected since the first edition has come true: Parma, with Barezzi and Verdi, forms a very powerful pairing, and from there you can also tell the story of the local cuisine, the area, the Bertolucci family, endless things.

Giovanni, thank you for this conversation, you've piqued our curiosity with these life stories about Barezzi and Verdi — of the latter in particular, I think many people are unaware of a side we might call "punk rock." Would you recommend a biography about him?

Definitely "Giuseppe Verdi. Vita di un uomo" by Gustavo Marchesi. A book that captures Verdi's character and his relationship with Barezzi perfectly. It's full of fascinating details that are usually overshadowed by the sheer weight of Verdi's music, but that feel remarkably relevant and intriguing today. Thank you all!

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