The first episode of ‘Taratatà’, a musical show hosted by Paolo Bonolis on Canale 5, perhaps aims to demonstrate that Mediaset could also host the Sanremo Festival. But bigger. In fact, too big. The artists involved are of the highest level including Giorgia, Ligabue, Elisa, Emma, ​​Biagio Antonacci, Max Pezzali singing their great hits and duetting together. Something is always missing from this show, however: beyond the grandeur, the soul, an emotion that reaches the viewer directly without getting lost in unnecessary pharaonicisms. Let’s see the pass and fail ones.

Paolo Bonolis, a talkative Marzullo. This is why the hosts of music festivals on TV speak very little: rating 5

He has been promised, for the umpteenth time, that he will be able to return to Canale 5 with ‘The Meaning of Life’. And Paolo Bonolis wanted to believe it. Again. We don’t know if the project will finally come to fruition (dream, boy, dream!, ed.) what is certain is that now we find the host in a context that doesn’t belong to him. And that he will have accepted ‘in exchange for’. Too talkative to limit himself to acting as a common thread between one performance and another, he overflows with even Marzullian questions: “Do you think offside exists in music? Do I mean songs beyond the public’s conception?”. Luciano Ligabue from Correggio, confused, responds with a very long preamble which is very similar to ‘but my topic of choice was Molise’ and glosses by saying that ‘in the end, anyway, sooner or later the ball enters the goal’. Those who present music festivals, in general, stand aside to leave room for the singers. Bonolis doesn’t even think about it, his desire to get the ball rolling, like the great showman that he is, devours him from the inside. And so here he is presented ‘Elisa da Monfalcone… which sounds like the name of a fiction!’, laughing as if it were Gabriele Cirilli. While the various artists perform, he is framed perhaps cowardly and his face gives the impression that if he could care less he would already be seeing the grass on the side of the roots. Yes, he kisses Giorgia on the mouth in a rather chaotic moment, but ultimately everything is because the format, the idea, is not there on the other hand, after the first quarter of an hour, two green benches appear on the scene, exactly the park ones. There Bonolis will doze off, sorry, he will chat with the guests, carrying on a strange obsession with ‘the province’ and how much coming from there has influenced all of them. Again Ligabue, as soon as he hears himself called ‘provincial’, frowns in the form of ‘The day of pain one has’, the editing must have saved this slippery situation from happening. But then: can you really stay seated with Elisa singing live in front of you? He doesn’t even make an effort to pretend to be fascinated by the prodigy, he seems more like someone waiting for pigeons to hand out stale bread crumbs to.

Max Pezzali’s eternal disbelief is a precious gift, to be protected: rating 9

“I didn’t even imagine I’d get to the following Monday” Max Pezzali replies when Bonolis asks him if, at the beginning with Mauro Repetto in 883, he would have ever expected all the success he later achieved. But Pezzali is like this: he wrote and sang generational anthems that will remain forever in the history of local music, he has a 30-year career behind him and continues to reap sold out stadiums and arenas. Sanremo made a ship available to him to perform during all the evenings of the Festival. But while he is on stage, especially if he has to speak, he has the expression of someone who doesn’t understand why everyone is looking at him. A heritage to be protected, even as a person. There is no Max Pezzali fan more enthusiastic, grateful and incredulous towards music than Max Pezzali himself. Regenerating. The unreleased duet with Giorgia on the notes of ‘They Killed Spider-Man’ is absolutely worth recovering, she (r)adds high notes never heard on that ‘usual night for wolves in the Bronx’, he looks at her in admiration, amazed as if he were faced with a Marian apparition in a French cave. Then, as a song of choice, he sings ‘Leggero’ by Ligabue which, with Pezzali’s voice, seems like a boy scout version, to be whistled carefree. They don’t make them like this anymore, Max Pezzali must be protected forever. Precious. Maybe one day he will also realize that he has become, more than deservedly, truly very very famous, a pillar of Italian music, a beacon of several generations. But in his time, there is no rush.

Panariello is Mr. Silvano, 10 minutes of monologue on the ‘ugly wife (and mother-in-law)’: rating 4

‘Do you know the latest?’ 1995, is that you? Giorgio Panariello appears on the stage already on the bench, in the role of one of his characters, Mr. Silvano. Flashy sunglasses, ours is produced in ten minutes of monologue (perceived duration of two hours, ed.) which revolve around a single theme: the despicable physical appearance of his wife Bruna and his mother-in-law (unnamed, ed.). ‘The doctor says she has to take anti-thrombus stockings, but I told her not to waste money on anything’, ‘when we went to the amusement park, in the tunnel of horrors, once we got out, the guy at the checkout ordered me to give him back what I had stolen from him’, ‘How is my wife in the kitchen? Ugly, like in the living room, the same! He took everything from his mother, my mother-in-law, who was also ugly as sin. In fact, think: she is the only one who still has the obligation to wear a mask. We’ll stop here, out of pity. In a subsequent chat, Panariello told Bonolis that he had said no to Carlo Conti for Sanremo: “He wanted me to compete with a song”, he jokes. But at this point we hope that the Ariston stage won’t really be on him, in general. We have already escaped Andrea Pucci, we do not perceive the need for a Tuscan equivalent. Please, eh.

Giorgia talks about her first time on stage (she was booed and insulted?!): rating 8

‘I’m telling you in friendship: you’re bored’, Paolo Bonolis thunders affectionately at her. In fact, Giorgia can do everything: sing and conduct divinely. Furthermore, she has a spontaneity that is very rare on TV, she reaches the viewer without apparent effort both when she speaks and when she produces impossible high notes which for her are the human equivalent of making a shopping list. Certainly the artist who put the most effort into this show, ours also had the opportunity to talk about her first time on stage. And, we don’t want to believe it, it didn’t go exactly smoothly: “I was with dad (also a singer, ed.). And the audience booed and insulted me, they didn’t like me at all. A truly unpleasant experience, but in fact I was taking too many creative liberties with my voice. Then, I managed to get back on track.” Booing and insulting Giorgia who sings. There are many ways to end up in hell, but this is certainly among the most serious. We would like to go back in time and arrest all those in the audience who were present at the time. Life imprisonment, never ending sentence, 41 bis. Ungrateful. No cure for them.

The grandeur that Mediaset always wants to flaunt takes away the emotion from the show: rating 3

Did we need an arena with 5 thousand people inside to do this show? No. The pachydermic location, including the stages, makes everything too distracting. With the criminal conspiracy of directing, too often we perceive Elisa, Giorgia, Emma, ​​very small, thrown there in the middle of an enormous space. But they could be one like the other, they look like tiny ants, the dots of a gigantic pointillist painting. The beauty of live music is the emotion it conveys. Here the emotion was crippled by Mediaset’s usual, pompous need to show off grandeur. What happens, for example, also to ‘Io Canto’: everything is too pharaonic between lights, effects and dimensions. The children there seem like sharp-shooting cyborgs, unlike ‘The Voice Kids’ where they can keep free, as well as their voice, also their being children. With the big names of Italian music involved in this ‘Taratatà’, it certainly made sense to resort to a more ceremonious location, worthy of their caliber. At the same time, especially due to the (too many!) overhead shots of the drones, the audience at home misses a large part of the show which, thus, becomes cold and distant. It was very difficult to neutralize the power of Mazinga’s performances of local music such as Giorgia, Elisa, Emma, ​​Ligabue, but yes, let’s do Biagio Antonacci too. But ‘Taratatà’ really tried hard to achieve it. And the mission is, unfortunately, almost accomplished. There is no proximity or intimacy, the show overall is more aseptic than a chic private clinic operating room with a spa. The comparison, an inevitable one, with the evening created by Fabio Fazio on Nove to remember and pay homage to Ornella Vanoni is humiliating for the Biscione. The recent factional episode had no scenography or special effects whatsoever. And he is quite capable of beating these unnecessary pharaohisms, as easy as it would be for Real Madrid to win against a team of amateur bachelors. We certainly won’t be the first to say it but: less is more. Just see here what the shots of the ‘old’ Taratatà Rai were like. Very close to the artists, almost as if we had to take a total body x-ray of them. It seemed as if they were about to leave the screen and join the viewer on the sofa at home. That’s how it works.