«Qwhen they called me for the audition, I answered… no. I had recently left School of the Teatro Stabile of Turin, I was planning to go to Belgium for a course. And, above all, I said to myself: “I’m the wrong person, I have nothing to do with Raffaella Carrà”. The fact that my grandmother had worn a blonde bob identical to hers for years didn’t seem like a sufficient reason to me.” He laughs, Chiara Dello Iacovowho however gave in: will be the protagonist of Raffa in the Skythe opera commissioned by the Donizetti Theater Foundation which will debut in Bergamo on 29 September (broadcast live on Rai5). The music is by Lamberto Curtoni – with a libretto by Renata Ciaravino and Alberto Mattioli – from an idea by Francesco Micheli (also director); on the podium, Carlo Boccadoro.
“She was an alien”
Chiara Dello Iacovo (photo Gianfranco Rota).
«It’s better to call it a fantasy opera» specifies the actress and singer, the only one in the cast who doesn’t come from the world of opera. «It’s not a biographical reconstruction, imagine the showgirl as a sort of alien, a spirit sent by the gods to earth to lend a hand to disastrous humanity».
Exhausted by Antigone
Why did he change his mind?
They contacted me while I was immersed in rehearsals Antigone with Gabriele Vacis: I am someone who faces everything with intensity (my goodness, poor person who is close to me!) and I was exhausted by the text, it requires a lot of truth. I understood that only Carrà could compensate for that “weight”. Reproducing her lightness was a challenge but, unexpectedly, once on stage I felt credible. And this role is even bringing great joy into my life, it lifts my mood.
What did you know – and what surprised you – about her?
I had in mind some clips I saw at Techetechete (program of video fragments from the Rai archive, ed) and his presence as judge a The Voice. End. Studying her was surprising: conditioned by the television model I had – I was born in ’95, I was totally caught up in the showgirl era – I found her a-sexualised in her being free, in using her body, in showing the navel. There wasn’t that objectification that has been seen in the last 25 years, there were no winks. She probably had an innate balance, a “martial” energy.
Female revolution
Yet it was a shock to the public.
The real revolution was to present a type of woman and a type of femininity that had not been “invented” before: it gave many people the opportunity to think of themselves in that way. Now that I know her, I understand that my aunt dances like her at parties: certain movements passed to her through osmosis (laughs).
“Carrambata” in Treccani
He changed the costume and even the lexicon (“carrambata” is in Treccani), becoming among other things an LGBT+ icon.
I believe his desire for liberation took hold (make love with whoever you want, let’s abandon cages-superstructures-preconceptions) in a state of happiness: how many liberations have been achieved in suffering or in the castration of something of oneself? Tuca Tuca, You start making love, Congratulations instead they exude joy.
Did playing her allow you, in some way, to get to know yourself better?
Oh yes: I realized that on the surface we seem to be antithetical, in reality we are not. There are phrases that I could have said, I was often moved.
An example?
In the scene in which the Hollywood star – with whom she is in love – tries to seduce her, at a certain point she stops: “But I like working!”, and leaves. It happens to me all the time: I fall in incredible love and want to leave everything, but then I feel like I’m fulfilling my mission when I’m busy, it’s my well-being, I feel that the universe is directing me there… My mother understood it, looking at the mine and Carrà’s birth theme: “You have the same planets and an earth moon which materializes in your profession”.
Astrology and destiny
Chiara Dello Iacovo “flies” at the rehearsals of “Raffa in the Sky” at the Donizetti Theater in Bergamo (photo Gianfranco Rota).
Is your mother an astrologer?
No (laughs), works in the company (my father is a dentist): it’s a passion. He recently revealed to me that he had started it because of me: he couldn’t understand where I had come from and was looking for a way to decipher me (laughs again).
What daughter was she?
A little girl with strong emotions, explosive reactions, need for space. I got yelled at a lot. I will always remember the comment of the philosophy teacher in high school, after I had asked him a question: “Dello Iacovo, you will have a very complex life”. Astrology confirms: there are intricate dynamics between my various planets, like a table of different people – each with their own needs – and we must be careful to nourish them without forgetting any of them… A turning point book for me was The goddesses inside the woman by Jean Shinoda Bolen, a psychoanalyst who associated Jungian archetypes with the Olympian goddesses. We potentially contain them all, but some predominate and, over time, we need to develop the ability to act as moderator in this assembly.
The most domineering goddesses in her?
A trio: Artemis (one of the virgin goddesses, solid in herself, does not need men), Aphrodite (pure creativity) and Persephone, the most problematic; as the myth teaches us, every six months he must travel to Hades, to hell.
Chiara Dello Iacovo and Aphrodite
Chiara Dello Iacovo doing makeup (photo Gianfranco Rota).
A tour of Hades?
I had crises about my gender, as a child I wanted to be a boy and, when I got my period, I cried desperately: it’s over, now I’m becoming a girl… At first I wrote in the masculine language: it seemed more neutral, in 2014 there isn’t any it was still this sensitivity about the gender. Lately I’ve been integrating the feminine side, but I truly consider myself a “creature”: neutral, in fact.
And his relationship with Aphrodite, creativity?
I spent my elementary school afternoons, before homework, inventing choreographies from scratch: we were a group, we called ourselves the Five Schif (laughs). Four kids jumping everywhere and me trying to keep things together and make sense. In the summer we went on holiday to the tourist villages and I spent day and evening with the entertainers, I watched the rehearsals, I never got away from it. Warning signs, perhaps. At eight years old I began studying the piano, with input from my father.
The electrocution there?
No. It came when I was 13, when my best friend forced me (I was an incredible tomboy, I snubbed romance) to see Camp Rock, a Disney film – questionable – about a music camp. That day I decided: “I want to sing”. I started taking lessons and the teacher, Paola Tomalino, when she learned that I wrote songs, pushed me to interpret them. Since – paradoxically – I was insecure about my voice, I found it a good suggestion: I “cut” the notes to size and didn’t have to fear comparisons. In the meantime, however, I took part in the high school theater workshops. In the fourth grade I took a semester abroad in Rochester, New York. A shocking trauma. The alienation of the school system, of American everyday life… We had staged a musical, Peter Pan, and I had narrowly missed out on the lead role. The thing I was most annoyed about was that this girl “flew” with the harness. And I in Raffa in the Sky I will fly with the harness. Incredible, a ten year cycle ends!
soprano
Sanremo e The Voice
Don’t run. In between he attended the festival Musiculture (awarded by critics), a The Voicein Sanremo…
I also released an album, but I wasn’t happy: I didn’t renew my contract with the record company. Having taken on an independent path, it didn’t work. I attempted admission to the Turin University: the real turning point. Both from an artistic point of view and from that of awareness: with Vacis I practiced the Array, an “active meditation” which – through breathing – connects you to your center and to others. I continue to experiment with alternative dance methods, such as Gaga.
Actress, singer, dancer: the future?
We know so little about ourselves and the bigger picture: with what presumption could I decide? “Have faith, have patience” is the mantra I’m repeating to myself. Little by little the doubts will dissolve. You have to trust that if you put your foot right, the step below appears. Yet, a job like this was my teenage me’s dream. And it has been for years.
So what’s wrong?
Nothing, reflections… It’s curious that it arrived at a time when, in some way, I was no longer chasing it. Maybe it’s a lesson, that’s the way things are: they are granted to you when you have proven that you can live happily without them. Only then do you have the opportunity to “cross them” with dedication and humility rather than with an excess of desire.
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