Twenty years have come since the beloved popular opera debuted in our country Notre Dame of Paris. It was March 14, 2002 when, at the GranTeatro in Rome, the curtain was raised for what is universally recognized as the most influential popular opera in Italy. In our peninsula alone, 47 cities were visited with a total of 1346 replicas.
At the base of this project there was the meeting between Luc Plamondon and Riccardo Cocciante, which we reached a few hours after the announcement of the restart of the tour of Our Lady in Italy (here the dates, the first on March 3 at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi in Milan), reuniting for the first time ever the original cast of 2002 with Lola Ponce and Giò di Tonno. For the occasion they are already available on digital platforms all the songs on the show with the studio version and the original 2002 live from the Verona Arena.
How did the idea of Our Lady?
«It all started out of any external intervention. The author of the original lyrics Luc Plamondon and I wrote the whole opera without anyone hearing an aria. We didn’t do it “for somebody”. We didn’t even have the idea of making a show of it. These types of shows are usually requested by a producer. Instead, in our case, we did it for ourselves ».
But then you realized you had a unique project of its kind in your hands …
«Yes, we decided to present it to a French producer who, however, on arriving, told us:“ I have no intention of doing it. I politely came to listen and that’s it ”. That day I went to the piano. Luc was by my side. We played it from start to finish. It wasn’t that simple (laughs, ed). In the end he was convinced. He got us to sign right away and we brought it to the stage Our Lady in France”.
Four years later, in 2002, he also made his debut in Italy. How did it happen?
“We invited David Zard to the Congress Palace in France. He gasped. But it is one thing to work in France and another to work in Italy. It is not obvious. In Italy, then, there was no kind of tradition for this type of representation. Once he is convinced to bring Our Lady also in Italy he said: “Let’s do it, but there must be a very high level”. He wondered how we could launch this show. And he created a new theater that wasn’t there before. A huge theater in Rome. This was very important because Our Lady it is a true popular work ”.
He cares a lot about this aspect. Because?
«Because I like to go towards the people, among the people. Even in stadiums, if possible. I don’t have the ambition to go to elite theaters. And having large spaces allows you to have a ticket that costs less. It means being able to bring the show to people from different walks of life. I consider the public as a global intelligence ».
Meaning what?
“I think he’s smart. Often he understands things in a more precise way than people “of the trade”. I’ll give you an example. Battisti released a single with a side A (the one on which his team was aiming) and a side B (traditionally considered as the most “useless”). As side A there was the song Anna, who arrived in the charts anyway because we are talking about an enormous artist like Battisti. But after a while the record actually flipped over because the audience kept listening to the B side. It was Emotions. The public chose it, while “the profession” had said no, considering it as a song that was too cultured, complicated and reflective ».
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