The Good News

The theatrical project on The Good News è conceived as a sort of contemporary Sacred Representation that alternates and interweaves Fabrizio de André&'s songs with narrative excerpts from the apocryphal Gospels that inspired the author himself: from the proto-gospel of James to the Gospel of the Armenian Childhood to fragments of Pseudo-Matthew.
«An artist's task, I believe, is to comment on the events of his time using the tools of art: allegory, metaphor, comparison». This statement by De André è is emblematic of how the author placed himself, in times of full student revolt, towards such a politically and spiritually delicate and debated topic. De Andr’s interpretation reveals a parallel path: on the one hand, an innate tendency to question everything that appears codified, dogmatic or traditional, and on the other, a sensibility that makes him prefer, among the many versions of the Apocrypha, the more noble, mature and richer choice, in search of a story that is perhaps less sacred, but always profoundly moral. The added dramaturgy, largely acted by Neri Marcorè, recounts the antecedent of L’infanzia di Maria, revealing its ‘miraculous birth’, and fills the gap from Christ’s childhood to the Crucifixion. In this way, 30 years of Jesus' life are summarised in a long story that reveals a Christ child who is also irritable, impulsive, who sometimes uses his powers for exhibitionism, either when he is accused and resuscitates a child who fell from a terrace to make him testify in his defence, or when, in a passage of great poetic quality, he leads his playmates in a visionary ride on the rays of the Sun. A dramaturgical elaboration, therefore, that in some way completes De André's tale, transforming La buona novella not only into a concert, but into an original show, acted, acted and sung by a company of actors, singers and musicians who will think the’De André's work as a rich heritage that can nevertheless well withstand, like any masterpiece, the absence of its creator's incomparable interpretation.