Claudio Lippi has long preferred television to music.
But he didn't put it aside definitively, so much so that this year he had decided to present a song at the Sanremo Festival.
"And luckily they didn't accept me, it would have created me a lot of anxiety", he says laughing, thinking about this strange festival that will take place anyway, even in times of pandemic, albeit among a thousand restrictions and anti Covid rules.
"But I don't give up - he warns jokingly -. And I leave the piece to a notary so that every year, even after my departure, it is presented to the festival commission, it's a matter of principle".
Then he gets serious again, and takes sides among those who would have preferred a postponement of the demonstration.
"Maybe in September, with a good number of vaccinations done. The festival cannot ignore what it represented for 70 years. It is so tied to history, to the atmosphere that is created, the only real event in Italy, the more long-lived, the most viewed and commented on even by those who say with snobbery not to watch it. But this year is not the festival, it is just a brand combined with two conductors ".
And then, given that "the one-year Olympics and the European football championships have been postponed by one year, events around which there are still strong economic interests, could it not have been thought about the Festival as well?".
As a singer, he is convinced that on television the empty audience ("but why didn't you manage to have a buffered audience like in many other broadcasts?") You will hardly notice, while "for the artist it is always essential to have an audience".
"When I sing, I put my heart into it to ensure that the emotion reaches the heart of another. Singing for anyone and staying closed all day in a hotel does not exactly create the ideal climate to bring emotions".
On TV, Lippi should have made his début paired with Samanta Togni at the conduct of Tomorrow is Sunday !, a weekly rotogravure starting from Saturday 13 February on Rai2.
But after a first meeting, he preferred to give up.
"I am grateful to the company and to Rai2 for the proposal received, but after 56 years of career I think I have the right to make different content choices, which go in the direction of contact with the public", he explains.
What he wants to focus on is the relationship with people, with a capital G.
"Let those who have things to say and do not know who to say them speak to, to those who have found a way to reinvent themselves. I do not invent anything, but it is a language that can be found".
There are many projects in the drawer, "different from Saturday morning entertainment, which I make available first of all to Rai, my first love, but I am ready to carry them out with anyone who will understand them, from commercial to satellite televisions", he adds.
He defines himself as a "humble clown, a bearer of smiles, mediator between camera and spectators" and for this he feels he has a great responsibility, especially now.
"These days, those who do my job have the task of counterbalancing the continuous and constant bulletin of victims of Covid, which has invaded the schedules. We have discovered a country inhabited by virologists, each of which has its own interpretation".
