Gloria!, the visionary musicians of Margherita Vicario

Glory! by Margherita Vicario is an all-female and slightly Martian musical film. Already in the running for Italy at the Berlinale and in theaters tomorrow with 01, it is set in a women's institute in Venice at the end of the 18th century. Precisely in the Sant'Ignazio institute, a cross between an orphanage, a conservatory and a convent. Here Teresa (Galatea Bellugi), a young woman with visionary talent, together with a small group of extraordinary musicians directed by Perlina (Paolo Rossi), a problematic and despotic Kapellmeister, secretly cultivate a completely modern, rebellious, pop music, a thousand miles away from the dominant baroque. Fresh allegory of an art and an era in which women counted for little and also redemption, always feminine, in Gloria! also the fantastic story of a contamination between classical and contemporary music that is not entirely impossible, but which lacks the story. "There have always been women musicians, very creatively free, who you found either in the courts or in the colleges, or in any case in protected places - says the director, singer-songwriter and actress in Berlin -. Talented women who preferred to become a nun in order to continue playing. Since they were the 'last', the outcasts, sometimes their surnames were the same as their instruments. I imagined that they could also perform very modern songs that no one would be able to hear. In short, I could make them play what I wanted without being denied." In the film written by Anita Rivaroli and Vicario, the cast features Carlotta Gamba, Veronica Lucchesi (La Representative di Lista), Elio (delle Storie tese), Natalino Balasso, Anita Kravos, Vincenzo Crea and Paolo Rossi in the role of Perlina Maestro di Cappella ( which might recall Vivaldi), but full of resentment for his creative sterility. "Playing a bad priest came quite easily to me - says Paolo Rossi -. Comedians enjoy dealing with the dark side of life. For example, clowns play with violence only to exorcise it. My fate is strange - he concludes - I started working in the parish where I did my first performance, but then I found myself in Lotta Continua". And again Vicario, granddaughter of the actor and director Marco Vicario and of the actress Rossana Podestà and also daughter of the director Francesco Vicario: "I come from music and I was always asked what I thought about women in music today. So I started to study the female composers from the 16th to the 20th century who were all little known and so I made a fictional film to do justice to those about whom nothing is known." Veronica Lucchesi (Lista Representative) then underlines: "This film arrived at the right time. It is difficult today to be heard in the musical environment and I was also disappointed with the narration of the music of other colleagues, always the same,I felt like a beautiful figurine and if you're not in that environment you disappear completely". Finally, Elio delle Storie Tese, who in the film plays Romeo, an assistant at the institute who is on the girls' side, says: "We must pay tribute to this courageous girl who is Vicario for having had the strength to carry forward her idea, that of making a musical film and in a difficult context like today's where only the Internet counts". Gloria! is a Tempesta production with Rai Cinema and Tellfilm.