We are now used to seeing serial adaptations of many sources, also coming from the most disparate media. Books are clearly a vast repertoire to draw from, as well as cinema or television itself, with operations such as revivals, spin-offs and so on. However, you can also go fishing from many other fields: from sport to history, passing, of course, through music. Here, usually, the adaptation mainly concerns biographies, but why not imagine, instead, serial subjects born precisely from songs same? After all, the songs are literary texts and very often tell stories, some of which are so intense and profound that they deserve more in-depth analysis. This is the case, for example, of the songs by Fabrizio De Andrevery powerful and full of ideas, certainly capable of giving life to great TV series.
With a good dose of imagination, therefore, let’s try to dig into the discography of the legendary Faber, looking for five songs that could give life to a great TV series. Given the diversity of media, especially in terms of length, the exercise here is to try to imagine how a given song might be structured on the serial format, serving as the basis for an obviously larger narrative. We chose De André for this idea because he is simply one of the greatest songwriters ever, whose lyrics lend themselves very well to this work given their complexity. Let’s start, therefore, with the drafting of these five small ones subjects based on the songs of Fabrizio De André.
Fabrizio De André and the TV series: Mouth of rose
Let’s start from one of Fabrizio De André’s most famous songs, whose narrative cue is evident and immediately received. Rose mouth tells, in itself, a story, that of one lass of free morals who arrives in an unspecified village and is targeted by the other women, who see her as a threat given her grip on men and cannot bear her ruthlessness towards the opposite sex. The subject of this song, of course, could open up to a great many variationsperhaps centered on changes of setting, both historical and geographical, and yet if we imagine rose mouth, we cannot fail to place it in a small Italian village, perhaps central-southern Italy, in a period that goes from the fifties to the early sixties.
A TV series about Rose mouth could, therefore, stage, as in the passage, the arrival of this woman, her adventures, perhaps even with the creation of intricate plots, up to her departure from the country, accompanied by a procession of dreamy men and the envy of the “wives of a village”. Just like Fabrizio De André’s song, the story could go on to insist on many themes, from the conception of sexual freedom to the intrigued village society, but above all on thehypocrisythe great theme of Rose mouthwhich could be eviscerated to perfection through the serial format.
Marinella’s song
Let’s move on to another famous song by Fabrizio De Andrè. Here too it is the passage itself that provides the heart of the story, or rather the story of Marinella, which in turn is inspired by a news story that the Genoese singer-songwriter read in a newspaper. The story sung in the song is very famous, it stages thistragic love between a boy and the young Marinella, who dies by falling into a river and the beloved, unaware of the fate of his girl, kept knocking on her door not believing in her passing. The story ne Marinella’s song is deliberately very vague, assuming the traits of fable and almost of the myth. This tragic love, however, seems perfect to be placed at the center of a miniseries and above all this vagueness of the song’s inspiration would allow the subject to be widely rewritten, leaving the tragedy at the center, but enriching it with the most disparate details.
The inspiration for the TV series could also come from some studies conducted on Fabrizio De André’s song, in particular from the research of Roberto Argenta, who advanced the thesis that the story read in the newspaper by the singer was that of Maria Boccuzzi, a young woman who was found dead in the Olona river towards the beginning of the 1950s. Not even fifteen, Maria fell in love with a boy and, since the family was against this union, she ran away with him, but the love between the two was short-lived and Maria thus found herself having to reinvent herself, becoming a prostitute . This is a very Fabrizio De Andrè-style story and, contaminated by the fabulous tones of Marinella’s song it could very well serve as the basis for a beautiful TV series.
Fabrizio De André and the TV series: Piero’s war
Another extraordinary and iconic success of Fabrizio De André. Peter’s War is one of the most intense and vivid songs about guerra, capable of returning an intimate and devastating cross-section of it. The very famous story is that of a young man who is sent to war to serve his country and, when he meets an enemy soldier, he has a moment of hesitation, due to his humanity and not being a trained soldier, and that moment it costs dearly since the enemy soldier notices him and “doesn’t reciprocate the courtesy”, killing him. The imprint antimilitarist it is evident Piero’s War a song that could give life to a series truly capable of showing the most dramatic sides of the war.
A possible TV series inspired by Fabrizio De André’s song could always start from the figure of Piero, maybe talking about his life, dreams and aspirations that he had to give up because of the call to the front. At this point there would be room for all the horrors of war, perhaps with the addition of some secondary characters to reinforce the narrative, up until the tragic death of Piero and the denunciation of the great drama of war.
The song of lost love
This time we change register a bit, we choose another very famous song by Fabrizio De André, but at the center of which there is no story as in the case of the three previous songs. The song of lost love is a song that Faber wrote on the occasion of the end of his first marriage with Enrica Rignon and the text analyzes, with disarming precision, the feelings that accompany the fine of a great love. To imagine a tv series based on The song of lost love you need to work a little imagination, yet the potential is exceptional.
The narrative could be based precisely on the story of the end of a love affair, whether it is a marriage or a great youthful passion, and could stage the drama by delving deeply into the psyche of the two lovers, showing everything that happens when, simply, a love ends, when two people break up because that flame has now gone out and they look for a way to go on. Fabrizio De André described these feelings with incredible sweetness, making them into a TV series would be a difficult task, yet at the same time it would be a stimulating challenge and above all able, if won, to return a great and wonderful TV series.
Fabrizio De André and the TV series: In my hour of freedom
We close with a more original and complex idea, different from the others staged so far, but still very fitting. In my hour of freedom is the concluding piece of Story of an employee one of the concept album by Fabrizio De André, which tells the story of a young employee who, inspired by the French May, approaches the revolutionary movements. Faber tells, through the succession of songs, the story of this employeehis disagreement between joining the cause and preserving his own individualism, up to the failed experimentation of the path of violence and imprisonment. In my hour of freedom it comes right at this moment, when the employee is in prison and here, looking at the other convicts like him, he becomes aware of the need for a common struggle, ending up leading a rebellion in prison thanks to the unity of purpose with the other prisoners.
A TV series inspired by this famous song by Fabrizio De André could adapt the whole discowhich offers a very interesting story full of ideas, culminating precisely in this last track, with the rebellion in prison and the adhesion of the employee to the collective movement of protest, by virtue of his renunciation of individualism. This would also be a truly great TV series, like those that can be imagined from the other aforementioned songs by Fabrizio De André and from many others in his endless discography.