PAOLO CONTE at the cinema "Paolo Conte at La Scala, The Maestro is in the soul”

“Paolo Conte alla Scala, The Maestro is in the soul” is the documentary film born from an exceptional event.

In February 2023, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, a temple of opera, classical music and ballet for 250 years, opened up for the first time to popular song – understood in the Anglophone meaning of popular music – and did so with the noblest and most authentically popular among the authors of songs in the Italian language, the most artist and the most artisan, the most literary and the most musician, the most classic and the most avant-garde: Paolo Conte.

The historic concert is both its predominant fulcrum and a pretext to enter the soul of the Maestro, observe him behind the scenes and during rehearsals, and question him in his relationship with music and musicians, with words and his passions.

The voice of today’s Maestro then mixes with that of the young Paolo Conte, through repertoire images from the family archive that tell “under the stars of jazz, how much night has passed”.

Music, memories and confidences therefore come together in this precious, intimate and poetic film, which goes straight to the artistic heart of a musician who in 2001, at the end of his tour in the United States, American critics defined as an “aesthetic ferryman from the twentieth century to the future ”.

A precise definition, capable of highlighting at the same time the radical and original spirit of the Master’s work and its more modernist grain, capable of authentically giving itself to the future, thanks to the eternal contemporaneity that is typical of classicism.

THE DISC

Precisely to honor and at the same time enhance this push towards the future that is typical of Paolo Conte’s music, a broader, ambitious, contemporary and multiplatform project was conceived by Sugarmusic around the film which also includes: an album in exclusively physical format – vinyl and CD to be released by Sugar on November 24th – unique and definitive testimony of a historical event, the first and therefore unrepeatable in Italian and international musical entertainment, a podcast, also online on November 24th – that is, the most contemporary narrative and digital tool of all, in which will have space for a special corpus of voices and contemporary artistic worlds such as Caterina Caselli, Francesco De Gregori, Lucio Corsi, Francesco Bianconi, Dente, Colapesce and Dimartino, Mahmood and the linguist Beatrice Cristalli who will ferry Paolo Conte from the twentieth century to tomorrow, projecting him into the future of music and songs in our language.

A narrative multiplied around a poetic scenario that of Paolo Conte – already in itself imbued with lyric multiplicity and plurality of signifiers – which aims to transmit its beauty to the new generations, to the future.

Paolo Conte at La Scala – declares Caterina Caselli – is the realization of a dream that comes from very far away, it is a fixed idea that has persecuted me for years, practically since I started collaborating with him to disseminate and enhance his art in international level, in harmony with its Manager Renzo Fantini.

I have always been in love with his artistic qualities, a reflection of a complexity that goes far beyond his splendid songs: the words, the music so cultured, inspired and at the same time direct and popular, the drawings, his very stage presence so unique. His class. Some time ago, attending a concert of his, the idea that had always been cradled in me that an artist of that greatness could perform in the most important Italian musical theater: La Scala was forcefully awakened in me.

Last February 19th the Maestro with his orchestra triumphed, as it should be, closing the concert amidst thunderous applause — tenacity always wins!”