AND tested by illness, but focused like never before on the present and on life: Giovanni Alleviaffected by a multiple myeloma for more than three years (a blood cancer that has a major impact on the kidneys, bones and immune system) a Sunday In he talked about his most difficult moment and how he is experiencing it. No anger in his words, just the extraordinary ability to glimpse the beauty in every day.
Giovanni Allevi: «Pain taught me to live in the present»
“THEthe body is in pain, between back pain and tremor, but my soul is sparkling and I’m very happy to be here” the fifty-six-year-old composer told Mara Venier, recalling the moment it all began: “I was doing a concert in Vienna, I felt terrible pain. The diagnosis was bone marrow cancer, multiple myeloma at an advanced stage.” The illness – Allevi admitted, changed him profoundly: «What I say may seem absurd, I consider pain my great teacher and not a punishment. He taught me to live in the presentmy future cannot go too far according to statistics: but I don’t believe in statistics. My tomorrow becomes a expanded present, which I want to experience as intensely as possible. Every sunrise is a promise, every sunset is a goodbye.”
Giovanni Allevi has been suffering from multiple myeloma for three years (Getty Images).
Allevi’s «warriors».
A strength that – the composer confided – comes from a specific place, the reception room of the Tumor Institute in Milan. «Me there I meet the warriors, the other patients: kind heroes who must fight. When a person maintains a smile through pain they become a soul that vibrates at higher frequencies.” Allevi describes them as “sparkling and shining souls”, examples from which to draw strength and teaching. A definition, that of warrior, which not all patients like, but in which some are certainly able to recognize their own path to illness.
Back to lifethe documentary that tells the story of the disease
And to give meaning to his pain, Giovanni Allevi did what he does best, put it to music. The 17, 18 and 19 November it will be possible to see it in over one hundred Italian cinemas Breed Back to Life, documentary film presented at the last Rome Film Festival which tells the story of the Maestro’s return to work after the diagnosis and initial treatment. A job closely linked to the disease. «When the diagnosis arrived, I didn’t ask myself if I would survive, I wondered which notes the letters of the word “myeloma” corresponded to: C, A flat, D, B, D, D, C, C… what a beautiful melody… From the first day of hospitalization I set myself the goal of composing amusical work dedicated to my illness, with the beginning precisely with those 7 notes” said Allevi a Sunday In,
Upcoming work commitments
A melody came out of it. «I wrote a concerto for cello and orchestra, MM22: Multiple Myeloma 2022a musical diary in which I recount the emotions of the months spent between life and death.” A diary that brought the film to life. Giovanni Allevi has no intention of stopping: on November 13th he left Ancona on Piano Solo Tour 25/26, which in the coming months will bring him in concert both in Italy and in Europe. To transform pain into a restart.