Who’s right and who’s wrong when a child dies?
Fiorella Mannoia: two Sunday musical excursions (#55 & 56)
The Irish Tourist Board says—with a great deal of justification—that one of the most beautiful of all Ireland’s sights and attractions is the sky above it. It is true. I have seen it. The clouds and winds rolling in from the western ocean make of Ireland a photographer’s paradise, as the climatic conditions mutate so quickly and suddenly that there are endless possibilities for dramatic pictures: those just as the weather changes.
The Irish sky has been eulogised about in many a home-grown ditty, from Foggy Dew to Where The Cliffs Touch the Sky, but today’s first musical excursion is not Irish in origin, rather Italian. Il cielo d’Irlanda (the Sky of Ireland) is a song sung by Italian singer Fiorella Mannoia, and the accompanying video is a delight: showing her in true seisún mood, with a foot-tapping tune accompanied by masses of red-haired children, traditional dancers, drummers, accordion-players and beaming smiles. Fiorella seems as embedded within her element as the members of her Irish entourage. The year was 1992.
The second song is of more recent date. It’s sung by the same Fiorella Mannoia, but by a different Fiorella Mannoia. She has moved on from simple pleasures of the Irish sky. Whilst Il cielo d’Irlanda sang of internalising the beauty of one’s homeland to live it as part of the soul, Il peso del coraggio speaks of facing up to uncomfortable questions and, instead of remaining silent, speaking out against injustice. Il cielo was a song for the carefree 90s. Il peso is a song for our current—less carefree—times. It dates from 2019, and it’s symptomatic of a change that has occurred in the singer—and indeed in us all—in the intervening years.
Musically, the song is in some measure a cliché. It booms out a message that starts with a small, tentative voice of introduction. Accordingly, it may not come over as all that interesting to the expert musicologists among you. Yet who can fail to be arrested by the line Chi ha torto et chi a ragione quando un bambino muore? Who’s right and who’s wrong when a child dies?
Its effectiveness—despite its lack of originality—doesn’t lie simply in the tried-and-tested format. Beyond that, the lyric resonates; it aligns with the listener’s experience; its force is conveyed by a voice that is authentic, and powerful. The voice of one who has lived the carefree years of the 90s, and cannot live them any longer. It’s then that it works. “E ho capito, e ho imperato,” Mannoia sings. And I have understood. And I have learned.
Il cielo d’Irlanda (The Irish Sky)
Written by Massimo Bubola
Performed by Fiorella Mannoia, from her 1992 album I treni a vapore (The Steam Trains)
Il peso del coraggio (The Weight of Courage)
Written by Amara
Performed by Fiorella Mannoia, from her 2019 album Personale
