The moment to live, the audience, the experience, Rome and the blue nights of the petrol station attendants: our video interview with Claudio Baglioni, at the cinema with the concert film Tutti Su! Happy birthday Claudius. In theaters on 15, 16, 17 May.
Over twenty musicians, choristers and performers, the artistic direction and theater direction by Giuliano Peparini and the video direction by Duccio Forzano. At the center of the stage, in a lineup illuminated by the emotions and stars of Rome, there can only be Claudius Baglioniprotagonist of All up! Happy birthday Claudius, or a film-concert that brought together the twelve evening events staged in June 2022 at the Baths of Caracalla. A film-concert, but also a document conceived, right from the title, to be “An exhortation, a stimulus to rediscover ourselves”, as the singer-songwriter explains, on the occasion of the event in theaters (May 15, 16, 17). To embellish everything, the spatial distribution of sound and Dolby Atmos technology, enhancing the concerts that have become cinemas.
And You will have a Viayes Beautiful love a This little big loveif the hall can no longer ignore experience, All up! Happy birthday Claudius is a suggestion capable of “Owning an enriched and different reading. Because fruition and listening are enhanced by the much more complete phonic recovery”explains Claudio Baglioni during our video interview. “The visual shots then take us to the center of the details, showing things that were happening at the same time. It’s a documentary film, but the interesting fact, supported by the songs, doesn’t miss the moment of emotion and makes us understand how much music is a fact physical. Hearing instruments and voices was a very important sensory emotion. I wanted to put together many suggestions”.
All up! Happy Birthday Claudio: video interview with Claudio Baglioni
But if All up! Happy birthday Claudio is the starting point, during the conversation, we asked Baglioni, who has always been linked to Rome, which film best represents the Eternal City: “There are many Neorealist films that represent Rome. It may be that I am contemporary with certain stories, but Rome makes me tender and nostalgic when I see them in black and white films, from the Italian comedy. I see the cities as I remember them: the cities that grew and fueled the hopes of an entire population. We lost that condition because we fear the future because it won’t even be like the present anymore”.
Claudio Baglioni: trailer and poster of the film Tutti su! Happy birthday Claudio, at the cinema from 15 to 17 May
The blue night of petrol stations
Claudio Baglioni’s compositions and verses are very figurative. A perfect example is “The Blue Night of the Gas Station Attendants”contained in Viaon side A of the legendary album Along the way. A wonderful song, a verse that manages to suggest the poetic melancholy imbued in the song. “That verse comes from the many trips on tour, moving at night, covering kilometers. Crossing Italy and finding a petrol station alone with whom to speak briefly. The sensation of colour, an iconic and pictorial scene. As often happens in writing: the songs not only poems, but also pictures as well”the singer-songwriter tells us.
But if it’s about emotions, now, more than fifty years after his debut album (Claudius Baglioni1971), and with hundreds of concerts under your belt, is it harder or easier to excite the audience? “It’s more difficult. The public has become the protagonist and less the public… it’s a sign of our times: we want to capture the feeling, but the emotion is food to be swallowed fresh. And if you then get lost behind a photo or a video , you risk losing your senses and the mystery of the emotion to be experienced in that exact instant”.
