Il signor G playlist

Il signor G

Performed inside a traveling tent-theater run by the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, ll signor G premiered in Seregno, a city in the hinterland of Milan, on 21 October, 1970. It was the first show with monologues and songs with which Giorgio Gaber attempted to evolve from pop music to theater and by which he in fact introduced  a new kind of show – the Teatro Canzone (the song theater) -, even though it wasn't yet referred to as such. In his performance, he alternated monologues with songs sung live, which completed and expanded the show's dramaturgical script.

The Piccolo Teatro di Milano was carrying out a policy of cultural decentralization by taking the shows it was producing to the outskirts of the city and to nearby towns. For this reason Il signor G was performed in Milan only on 13 January, 1971. The double LP that gathered the monologues and songs from the show (and that we present here in its entirety) was recorded live but in a recording studio, the Regson in Milan. The audience consisted of invited spectators who responded enthusiastically to the new direction that Gaber was giving to his career and which had been on his mind for a long time.

He began envisioning other horizons as he became increasingly dissatisfied with being an artist caught in the mechanisms of the record industry (he had participated in the San Remo Music Festival, Canzonissima, Cantagiro and the Naples Music Festival) and meanwhile collected several positive experiences as the host of successful and highly-popular TV shows. He had realized and was absolutely convinced that he could express his talents as an actor and entertainer in a different kind of show. One that took into account his role as a singer while leaving him free to sing and talk about what he most cared about.

It was no coincidence that in Il signor G he chose to sing many songs from his 1960s repertoire, such as Le Nostre Serate, Suona Chitarra, Eppure Sembra un Uomo and Com’è Bella la Città. And, this link with his past succeeded in not disorienting his audience too much, as they were fond of those songs. The sole author of the show and the LP was officially Gaber but in reality Sandro Luporini, a painter from Viareggio he had met several years before, had taken part in their production. From then on, all of the shows and albums of his long and rewarding career would be the result of their team work.