"I knew very little about Mameli, then I studied and discovered the essence of this person. He wrote this song to make people understand that they were not alone. Goffredo is full of beautiful nuances, he loves, he believes in friendship, in equality and freedom and exploits his fame to make Italy and Italians".
Speaking is the young actor Riccardo De Rinaldis Santorelli, who lends his face and enthusiasm to Goffredo Mameli, the young Genoese man, the poet, the patriot, who, with his 'Canto degli italiani' (which he wrote on 10 September 1847 and was set to music by Michele Novaro on 24 November of the same year) and his participation in the revolutionary uprisings in Italy, he is among the witnesses of the Risorgimento.
Mameli - The boy who dreamed of Italy is the miniseries in two episodes by Pepito Produzioni by Agostino Saccà and Rai Fiction, arriving immediately after Sanremo, on Rai1 on Monday 12 and Tuesday 13 February in prime time.
The purpose, explains Saccà, is to "remove the dust from the Risorgimento. A dust which is the rhetoric that made it become boring even for young people who, instead, should be proud of it".
A life, that of Mameli, short but intense (he died before the age of twenty-two due to a leg wound sustained at the front) which Rai Fiction and Pepito and the screenwriters decided to tell by treating him as a sort of "first rock star in history" : "We looked for a popular key that could allow us to enter a founding moment in the history of our country - underlines the director of Rai Fiction Maria Pia Ammirati -: it is that of a 19-year-old boy who writes the anthem that we still sing and dies at almost 22 to defend a homeland that did not yet exist, for the dream of a united Italy which cost the lives of many other young people".
Not only that: "We celebrate youth full of dreams and passions, the life of a boy who throws himself into battle without any experience, and together the theme of friendship and passion which then had a different tone from today".
"We relied - says Ammirati - on important historical consultants who gave their approval, then, as in every fiction there is some forcing but the film is rigorously faithful to the story, including the love stories".
Saccà also announces the project of a work on Cavour and his death.
Directors Luca Lucini and Ago Panini add: "It seemed fascinating to us to talk about that age in which everything is possible. It is only thanks to his energy, his passion and his desire to change the world that Mameli managed to convey his wish to all Italians of that moment. Thanks to this miniseries we bring down the names of the busts and streets from their pedestals and discover that they were true."
Boys like Nino Bixio (Amedeo Gullà),
brotherly friend of Mameli;
Geronima Ferretti (Barbara Venturato) and Adele Baroffio (Chiara Celotto), both linked to Goffredo by a great love.
In the miniseries we also see Mazzini, Garibaldi, Ciceruacchio.
"Bixio is a boy who grows alone, he has great strength and great ideals but he becomes complete only by meeting Goffredo, each absorbs something from the other" states Gullà.
To those who point out that Mameli airs immediately after La Lunga Notte, the fiction starring Alessio Boni dedicated to the fall of the Duce, Ammirati replies that "he cannot share the idea of a political theory of programming. The miniseries arrives after Sanremo because it is one of the moments in which the sense of national unity is most present. Last year the Festival was opened by the Anthem".
Saccà adds: "I don't understand why Mameli should have this prejudice, it belongs to everyone. Furthermore, his was the first member of the Action Party, founded by Mazzini in Rome".
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