Rome – Married for just over a month.
Alessandro Baricco and Gloria Campaner: “Between her and the illness, certain rigidities that I had had throughout my life dissolved in me. We got closer, adjusted”, confesses the writer to Corriere della Sera, in an interview in his house in Rome in which Gloria says that together they are working on a six-handed project, with Nicola Campogrande: Seven Springs. «It is a series of musical meetings that will be staged at the Holden school for seven Tuesdays from April 2nd; concerts followed by a moment of dialogue with the artists”, explains Campaner.
Music is a strong bond between them: «Before making my debut as a novelist, I was a music critic» says Baricco «and before that, I graduated in philosophy, with Vattimo. I did my thesis on Adorno – on Aesthetic Theory, a text of brilliant intuitions, written in a very elegant way. I adored Benjamin and, since Adorno was able to give order to Benjamin’s amazing but scattered thoughts, for me it was also a way to follow up on my adoration.”
After experiencing success early on, in recent years they have both expressed the desire to take a step back. «I cut back on concerts» says Campaner «because I wanted to get off the very fast train I had been traveling on for too long. I wanted lots of stops, to be able to get off at small stations. Now I enjoy this slowness, which doesn’t distance me from music but allows me to also be interested in other aspects: musical direction, building a festival, the laboratory for musicians I founded, C#/See Sharp. I got a diploma in coaching. I study and play, always. But I was tired of the loneliness and the frenzy, I struggled to enjoy things, locked in the dressing room revising the score for the next day instead of being with those who had come to visit me. I have the greatest respect for the life I have led for years, the life of many of my colleagues; But for me it was time to slow down.”
Is it too early to say if marriage changes things? «It was a chimera, something more than intimate: a sensation in the depths of my heart. I wanted it a lot, and being able to make it happen was a delight,” he says.