MILAN – On a sunny day in the early 1980s Lucio Dalla is about to leave by boat for Capri but gets stuck in Sorrento due to a boat breakdown. While waiting to get into the sea, he stays at the Vittoria Hotel, in the “Caruso” suite, where the famous tenor spent the last months of his life. Speaking with the owner of the hotel, he learns about stories and several anecdotes about the life of the tenor Enrico Caruso. It was in that room that the tenor was giving singing lessons to a young girl he had fallen in love with. Fascinated by the discovery, Dalla decides to tell this story in a song, composing it on the piano – now forgotten – played by Caruso himself . “Anna and Marco” by Lucio Dalla: the manifesto of young people of all times
“Anna e Marco” by Lucio Dalla and the song that tells of two doubting and restless boys about their future The intimacy of a poem
In this song, released in 1986, Lucio Dalla tells us an intimate story, made up of passions and melancholy, of love and loneliness. “Here where the sea shines and the wind blows strongly on an old terrace facing the Gulf of Surriento”, sings Dalla, who with a few simple words manages to transport us to Sorrento and give us back the suggestions of the place. Then he introduces the sentimental theme, the embrace between the man and the girl, and the song of passion: “I love you assaje but very, very well you know, and now a chain that melts the blood inside the veins, you know” . What Lucio sings is a love that has become strong and resistant like a chain, a chain that does not hurt but good, because the feelings inspired by the girl in the man “dissolve the blood in the veins”, are good for the whole body. The beauty of this song,Love that unmasks
“He saw the lights in the middle of the sea, I think of the nights there in America, but they were only the lamps and the white trail of a propeller”, Lucio sings, telling us about Caruso looking out on the terrace looking back on his life. This man is now melancholy because he knows his career is over, as is his life. But once again it is love that saves him. “Power of opera, where every drama is a fake, which with a little makeup and mimicry you can become another”, sings Lucio Dalla, because Caruso for all his life, due to his work, was forced to wear endless masks. Now, next to this girl, looking at his “close and true” eyes, “even death seems sweeter to him”. Caruso can finally be himself and accept the inexorable end that awaits him, singing one last time his great love:
“I love you assaje
but very, very well, you know
and by now a chain
that melts the blood inside the veins, you know …” READ ALSO: Because “I fell in love with you” by Luigi Tenco and to be considered poetry
PHOTO CREDITS: Radio1
