Flying with Domenico Modugno
City lights: Domenico Modugno
di Maria Stella
I think a dream like this never comes back
I painted my hands and face blue
Then, suddenly, I was kidnapped by the wind
And I began to fly in the infinite sky
Flying, oh, oh
Singing, oh, oh
In the blue-painted blue sky
Happy to be up there
And I flew, I flew happily higher than the sun
And even higher
While the world slowly disappeared far down below
Sweet music was playing just for me
It was for many years the only one for an Italian song. From our happiest days to difficult days, including the Corona period, we have held on. We flew away from happiness. Or we are freed from our pain. The whole world has heard this song, which is in the memories and moments of each of us, for the first time in the voice of Dominico Modugno.
Domenico Modugno is considered the father of Italian songwriters and as an interpreter author is among the greatest in Europe. He was born on January 9, 1928 in Polignano a Mare (Bari), a small village with white houses overlooking the sea.
.From his father Cosimo, commander of the Municipal Guard Corps in San Pietro Vernotico (BR), he learned to play the guitar and the accordion from an early age and inherited a great passion for music, composing his first song at the age of 15.
Modugno had an extraordinary, moving voice. And he was very talented. Modugno first learned to play the guitar, then the accordion as a teenager, and wrote his first songs in 1945, without ever recording them. Two years later he moved to Turin in search of fortune, without his father’s knowledge. After completing his military service, grew a mustache and began playing serenades as an accordionist.
He began his artistic career in Rome, where he joined the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1951, and began working in cinema and theater.
He took part in the film “Filumena Marturano” by Eduardo De Filippo and in 1952 in “Carica heroic” by De Robert where he played the part of a Sicilian soldier who sings the “Lullaby” to a little girl. It is from this episode that the legend of the “Sicilian Modugno” was born. Also, in 1952 he was a “young actor” in the theater in “The bourgeois gentleman” by Molière (Tatiana Pavlova Company) and took part in the films “Anni facili” by Zampa (1953) and in the episode “La giara” with Turi Pandolfini and Franca Gandolfi, from Giorgio Pàstina’s film “This is life” (1954). In 1953 he presented himself in the “Trampolino” radio music competition and later took part in the “Radioclub” broadcast in honor of Frank Sinatra.
It was then that Fulvio Palmieri of Rai offered him a series of radio broadcasts entitled “Amuri… Amuri” of which he himself wrote the texts and in which he was the director and, together with Franca Gandolfi, the actor and even the noise maker.
During this period, he composed many songs in Apulian dialect (by San Pietro Vernotico) and in Sicilian inspired by Apulian and Sicilian folklore. Miners, fishermen, love stories of swordfish in love, faithful to death in the tuna trap massacre, of horses gone blind and driven to die in the great scorching sun after the dark of the mines. These were the characters of his first songs that aroused, and still arouse, interest from the critics.
The songs of that period were: “Lu piscespada”, “Lu minaturi”, “The wake-up call”, “La donna riccia”, “Attimu d’amuri”, etc. In the 1955/1956 theater season he acted at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan in “Italia, Sabato sera” by A. Contarello directed by Franco Parenti – Jacques Lecoq and in “Il Diluvio” by Ugo Betti.
In 1957 he won the II prize at the Festival della Canzone Napoletana with “Lazzarella” (sung by Aurelio Fierro) which brought him popular success. This was followed by: “Sole, sole, sole”, “Resta cu mme”, “Nisciuno po’ sape”, “Io, mumma e tu” etc. which modernized the style of the Neapolitan song.
In 1958 he participated in the Prose Festival in Venice in Antonio Aniante’s comedy “La rosa di sulfur” directed by Enriquez. In the same year he participated in the Italian song festival in Sanremo with “Nel blu painted di blu”, co-author Franco Migliacci, who won the first prize and revolutionized the Italian song and started the boom in Italian record sales up to then very low. “Volare” was translated into all languages, topped the charts all over the world, even in North America, where millions and millions of copies were sold, so much so that in 1958 the American record industry awarded him the Oscar of disc and invented the Grammy Awards. The two Grammy Awards assigned to him, one as record of the year and one as song of the year 1958, were the first in history.
Even the Cash Box Billboard awarded him the Oscar for the best song of the year and received as gifts from the music industries three gold records, one for the best singer, one for the best song and one for the best-selling album.
During one tour, he was offered the keys to Washington and the sheriff’s star of Atlantic City. For four months without interruption Broadway loudspeakers and radio stations played the original tune of “Volare”.
In 1959 he won the first prize of the Sanremo Festival again with “Piove” (Ciao, ciao bimbo) and in 1960 the second with the song “Libero”.
In 1961, after a year of inactivity due to an accident, he made his debut as the protagonist in the musical comedy “Rinaldo in campo” by Garinei and Giovannini, for which he also composed all the music and which was defined: “The biggest theatrical success of all time occurred in Italy”, recording box office records never achieved in this field.
“Rinaldo in campo” represented Italy at the International Theater Festival in France, to huge critical acclaim. In this show, among others, there are the songs “If god will want”, “Notte chiara”, “Three brigands and three donkeys” and “The flag” which is taught to the children of many Italian elementary schools.
In 1962 he won the first prize again at the Sanremo Festival with the song “Addio…, Addio…” followed by “Giovane amore” and “Stasera pago io”. In 1963 he tried his hand at directing the film “Everything is music”.
In 1964 he won the Naples Festival with “Tu si’ ‘na cosa grande”.
In 1965 on television he played the role of “Scaramouche” in the homonymous drama directed by Daniele Danza and for which he composed all the music. In 1966 he won the first prize of the Sanremo Festival once again with the song “Dio, come ti amo”.
Modugno married the actress Franca Gandolfi in 1955, with whom he had three sons: Marco, Massimo and Marcello. In August 2019, the First Civil Section of the Supreme Court of Cassation definitively recognized (after 18 years of legal battles) that Fabio Camilli, born on 10 August 1962, was also the son of Domenico Modugno. Fabio was born to the dancer and director Maurizia Calì, at the time married to the engineer Romano Camilli.
Domenico Modugno died early on August 6, 1994, at the age of 66, due to a serious illness that took his life. Three years before his death, he had been hospitalized in Paris, having suffered a cardiac episode while flying on a TWA plane. Luckily there was a doctor on board, who examined him, helping him in the meantime, until he landed. A complex medical story, considering that in 1984 Modugno was hit by a stroke, which had partially paralyzed him. In that case, it was the doctors of Niguarda in Milan who saved him. A compromised state of health, therefore, until the fatal heart attack in 1994 in Lampedusa.
But continues to exist both in our hearts, in our languages, and in our lives. He lives…
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