Raffaella Carrà would have been 80 years old on June 18, 2023. Just this year, the Donizetti Theater Foundation of Bergamo commissioned a work dedicated to her: “Raffa in the Sky”, which Rai Cultura will show on Friday September 29th at 9:15 p.m. on Rai 5. The project is created in collaboration with the Radio Museum and the Television of the Rai Production Center in Turin. The composer is Lamberto Curtoni, who worked on a libretto by Renata Ciaravino and Alberto Mattioli, based on an idea by Francesco Micheli, who staged the performance on the stage of the Donizetti Theater in Bergamo, a city that this year – together with Brescia – this is Italian Capital of Culture.
“Raffa in the Sky” is an opera, a real opera, inspired by the iconic character Raffaella Carrà, a great protagonist of Italian television but also an international figure. It is not a musical biography, but the story of an artistic career that accompanied and sometimes stimulated the changes in Italian society over the last half century. Through Carrà’s extraordinary experience, the work also aims to reflect on the role of the artist in society, on the value and use of art, on the role of television and other media, without forgetting the songs that Raffaella sings in a travel story presented The path of the surreal and the paradox that speaks to us all.
The very young Chiara Dello Iacovo, an actress graduated from the Scuola del Teatro Stabile in Turin and singer with participations in Musicultura 2015 and the Sanremo Festival (Nuove Proposte 2016), is called to play Raffaella Carrà in this new Bergamo production. Next to her, on the podium of an orchestra consisting of the Sentieri Ensemble Selvaggi and the Donizetti, stands a cast of great opera singers such as Carmela Remigio, Gaia Petrone, Dave Monaco, Haris Andrianos and Roberto Lorenzi, conducted by Carlo Boccadoro – an avid interpreter of contemporary works Opera Orchestra. Also on stage will be the choir I Piccoli Musici under the direction of Mario Mora and the dancers of Fattoria Vittadini. In addition to director Francesco Micheli, the creative team consists of Edoardo Sanchi (scenes), Alessio Rosati (costumes), Mattia Agatiello (choreographer) and Alessandro Andreoli (lighting designer).
“I am sure that Raffaella would be fascinated, flattered and thrilled – says the choreographer and television director Sergio Japino, who worked alongside Carrà for years and was one of the authors involved in the creation of this work – if he knew what she was in did in her life, even in a world like that of the opera that seemed far removed from his own world, he found listeners and a home. A world that she loved, as shown by the Gran Concerto of which she was the author on Rai 3, where the Rai National Symphony Orchestra presented pieces of classical and operatic music to a large audience of children. Ultimately, it is the story of a woman and an artist who has always courageously tried to explore and bring together different worlds: dance, cinema, television, singing. And different cultural contexts: from South America to Russia, from the studios of the Letterman Show and Hollywood to the glittering television studios of Cinecittà. And above all, different people: women, men, children who found inspiration, fun, familiarity, salvation in her. For her it was not important where she should do something, but how: with how much love, self-denial, passion. And with how much desire to get to know other people: their world, their stories. At home like anywhere in the world.” The television direction is by Fabrizio Guttuso Alaimo.