"Quando tu sarai tornato al mondo e riposato de la lunga via ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma: salsi colui che 'nanellata pria risposando m'avea con la sua gemma"
(When you will have returned to the world, and rested yourself from your long travels, remember me that am named Pia: from Siena I came, and Maremma was my end: he who betrothed me once, knows it, and married me again with his gem)
(Divine Comedy - Purgatory, Canto V)
These verses of the Divine Comedy have inspired Gianna Nannini's latest album, a rock opera born out of the collaboration between the artist and the writer and musician Pia Pera. Eleven tracks that tell a story of love, jealousy, treachery and spiritual triumph, through the intensity of music.
The story of Pia de' Tolomei tells of a beautiful young girl, who, while her spouse is away at war, resists the amorous attentions of Ghino. The rejected young man, his male pride dented, gets his perfidious revenge by spreading slanderous innuendos on her husband's return. Without even bothering to listen to her desperate pleas, Nello believes the villain and shuts her up in his castle in Maremma.
Gianna Nannini began composing the opera "Pia de' Tolomei" ten years ago, in Maremma, among the ruins of the castle, together with Pia Pera, the author of the libretto. Both had felt that in some way those crumbling walls bore the moving signs of the young woman's suffering, the thread that connects the songs on the album that alternates violent, aggressive rock explosions and more intimate and introspective melodies in a modern version of Tuscan songwriting.
Among the most significant tracks, that best capture the contrast between the imprisoned woman's two souls - the dull rage and the lamentation - stand "Dolente Pia" and "Mura mura". The first is a cry of silent voices, that lie hidden within the walls, the anguish of a woman who has not been given the chance to voice her own truth and takes her revenge on the past in a passionate rock outburst. The other represents the more introspective and intimate side of this anguish through the rhythms of a soulfully delicate lullaby.