Sassari: Italo Calvino explained to students by Elio Biffi, frontman of the band Pinguini Tattici Nucleari

“Last comes the crow - readings and songs by the resistance Calvino”: between literature, music and singing, the Liceo Musicale Azuni of Sassari hosted an original reading dedicated to the Italian writer and intellectual, whose centenary of birth occurs today. Exceptional protagonist Elio Biffi, voice and keyboardist of the group “Pinguini Tattici Nucleari”, who met the students on the initiative of Fabio Madau, professor of music history, thanks to the proposal of the association “Le Ragazze Terrible” present at the event with Barbara Vargiu and Beatrice Sorba.

The musician of the well-known band, which among other things was formed right at school, read in a new style some songs from the collection which inspired his performance for the fourth edition of the literary festival “Fino a leggermi matto – Musica tra le pagina”, held in recent days in Sassari, also performing some songs written by Italo Calvino, whose birth centenary this year marks.

In the meeting with the Azunian students, Biffi began by interpreting a song entitled “Where does the vulture fly?”, written by Calvino when he was part of the musical and literary group “Cantacronache”, and then he read the story “Last comes the crow ”, a story of partisan life, followed by two others from the same collection.

The musician explained to the students the origins of his passion for Calvino the writer, capable of making the harsh reality told in his works less dramatic with the use of imagination in sometimes almost fairy-tale pages, with children as protagonists, weapons represented as magical objects and the sweet outline of nature to comfort sad human events.

Elio Biffi underlined that Calvino experienced firsthand the tragedies of his time, starting from his participation in the partisan struggle with the name of Santiago (he was born in Santiago de Las Vegas de La Habana, Cuba), little more than in his twenties during the Second World War, until the slow and painful re-establishment of social order after the conflict. The song "Oltre il ponte" is particularly emotional in which Calvino talks about war, the past, hope and youthful dreams that never die.