“Night of tears and prayers, mathematics will never be my profession”. Raise your hand if you haven’t sung it at the top of your lungs in those very special hours, before graduation. ‘Notte prima degli exami’ turns forty and, to celebrate the anniversary of the release of the album “Cuore”, Antonello Venditti gives life to ‘Notte prima degli exami 1984-2024 40th anniversary’, a live and recording project to celebrate the album which collects songs that have become the history of Italian music, in their current relevance, and generational anthems.
The initiative, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, was presented this morning at the Mic in the presence of Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano and Undersecretary Gianmarco Mazzi.
The morning opened with an ‘Antonello’, as he likes to be called, “don’t call me master”, prof. exceptional intent on marking the roll call of the students of Visconti and Giulio Cesare in the Spadolini room. “I have never stopped being a student” said Venditti, before performing on the piano, from Night before the exams to We would like a friend, which inevitably triggered the memory of his friend Dalla: “If Lucio wasn’t there, this song wouldn’t exist.”
“The night before the exams we went with a friend by car to Florence, then we returned to the Giulio Cesare fresh for the exam – he confided, adding then, referring to the lyrics of the iconic song of maturity “leave me the mystery about ‘le bombe of six don’t hurt, I won’t tell you that.” “Just to listen to his songs, I once went to a Unity party. He has always been intellectually honest” said Sangiuliano, who arrived at the conference late, which the singer-songwriter did not fail to underline: “minister or not minister, life goes on, I perform. The minister perhaps missed an excellent opportunity to hear this performance.”
The ‘Night before exams 1984-2024 40th anniversary’ project will start with a special preview – already sold out for months – at the Verona Arena on 19 May, and will then officially kick off in June, with three dates at the Terme di Caracalla, on the 18th, 19th and 21st, also sold out. And it will be June 18th, the night before the state exams, the first of three evenings in which the artist will return to perform in the capital. Venditti and his superband will bring the songs from the album “Cuore” to the stage along with many other successes from his long extraordinary musical history, in a series of concert-events. The celebrations will then continue in July with a long summer tour, starting on 13 July from Pistoia, which will touch some of the most prestigious places on the Peninsula, including stone theatres, historic villas and spectacular squares, while in December the project will arrive on the large stages of Palasport. The album “Cuore”, released for the first time in 1984, will have a new reissue in the special edition “Cuore 40th Anniversary Edition” released on June 14, 2024 by Heinz Music/Sony Music Italy. Since its release, ‘Night Before the Exams’ has been a huge success and has managed to cross generations. Even today it represents the soundtrack of the leap to maturity. Even today, after forty years, “this night is still ours”.