Giovanni Allevi, father Nazzareno's fears about his son's decision to return to performing despite his illness

They say “mother's heart”, but in the case of Giovanni Allevi it ​​is the “father's heart” that speaks. The maestro, in fact, was among the most applauded guests of the Sanremo Festivalbut it cost him a lot, in terms of physical pain.

Father Nazzareno told it to Adriatic Courier demonstrating all his apprehension for his son's illness. The 54-year-old artist from Ascoli Piceno, in fact, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which kept him in bed with extremely painful back pain, being a tumor that affects some cells of the bone marrow and which causes, as in his case, inoperable bone fractures.

Hence the parent's fear, revealed to the newspaper: «Giovanni remained bedridden for a year, suspended between life and death. Will he make it or not? we asked ourselves as a family, almost every day. It was a very painful time for us. But in life you must always move forward, without stopping. Giovanni has an irrepressible desire to start working again.” It is not just the performance on the Ariston stage, but a series of smaller-scale concerts that he began to hold, starting on 9 February from Massa Carrara and then continuing in Parma, Pescara, Brescia, Padua, Rome, Taranto and Ravenna, for a total of eight appointments.

«John is still suffering», continues Mr. Nazzareno. «He wears a back brace because the pain hasn't gone away. As a father I would have preferred him to rest a few more days, but that's how he is. When he makes a decision, that's it, there's nothing that can stop him. His boundless love for music and the great desire to play again are stronger than the physical pain he feels».

The result, as always happens in his performances, was thrilling, as was the monologue that Giovanni Allevi gave to the audience at the Ariston Theatre, through tears: «Suddenly everything collapsed for me. I haven't played the piano in front of an audience in almost two years. In my last concert in Vienna the pain in my back was so bad that during the final applause I couldn't get up from the stool and I didn't know I was sick yet. Then came the very serious diagnosis, I looked at the ceiling with the sensation of having a fever of 39 for a consecutive year. I lost a lot: my job, my hair, my certainties, but not my hope and the desire to imagine… I want to accept the new Giovanni.”

Having two broken vertebrae, he concluded that he would play Tomorrow and so it was, among his curly hair now whitened by therapy. No rhetoric, no do-goodism, just reality which can sometimes be cruel, but in Allevi's vision also a dispenser of “unexpected gifts”.