the story of Giacomo Diano
Other than din don. It takes passion to capture listening, attention, excite. But it takes a director, a true bell ringer, perhaps the last of the Roman bell ringer. He is also a young man who has always been passionate about bells. He is 34 years old his name is Giacomo Diano he lives in the Pinciano district and has no doubts: “I am one of the last bell-ringers”. He knows the upper floors of most Roman churches, from the center to the periphery, above all he has prepared the best sound for each one, at the request of the parish priest, only by word of mouth, voluntary bell ringer and passion. “During the lockdown the bells kept a lot of company and I received many requests to program them at particular times, people got used to hearing them, in San Lorenzo in the parish of Santa Maria Immacolata dal covid the tradition of every evening at 9 pm remained the greater bell in celebration: for the last evening Ave Maria, the so-called lost and to remember the victims of the coronavirus “. Giacomo Diano, organist, has cultivated this passion since he was a child. Dalla di San Giuseppe al Trionfale (2001), «with its 8 bells, where the parish tells my grandmother and where I am an organist, I made my way alone. I have also made every bell ringer’s dream come true: ring the bell of St. Peter’s on June 29, 2012. Closed to the public, few can say in fact “.
Giacomo sets the bells for ceremonies, Christmas celebrations, the parish priests call and he executes, «I rang for the first time in San Saturnino, I was 7 years old, the sacristan could not tell me no. Now I go from church to church and program the sounds, rarely do I find stringed bells, mostly driven by motors and hammers. Only at the Festa de Noantri do I go from church to church to pull strings, in Trastevere they are albums, so much so that in San Benedetto in Piscinula there is the oldest in Rome, it is played with a rope, it is from 1069, it happens at the end marriage that makes it sound like a good omen to the newlyweds. ” He is often contacted for advice, to take a look at the bell tower. He rides a scooter and does it for free. On November 4th, for the commemoration of the Unknown Soldier, a great satisfaction: «I played with the carillon of bells of the church of San Paolo in via Nazionale: 23, there is plenty to indulge in. The infantry had specifically asked for the Piave hymn and the Mameli hymn. Under the lockdown I often went there and played everything from “Rome, Rome, Rome” to the Mameli Hymn to Captain Harlock. The happy people looked out and sang ».
A LATE SCHOOL
As a child he forced his mother to take him to school late to hear the bells of S. Maria Gregoretti in the stroller. At the Festa de Noantri he runs from church to church because to reproduce the passage of the Madonna, «I also participated in the programming and sound diffusion of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Paolo fuori le mura. If you ring well, the bells let people know what’s going on. Of course it depends a lot on how many there are, on the Togliatti in the parish of San Bernardo I put Christmas and Easter carols, they have 7 bells. The same at the Quarticciolo recently I made some achievements of sound ». More than a passage in the Argentine church in Buenos Aires square. «In San Giovanni in the parish of Sts. Antonio and Annibale Maria he asked me to make a funeral sound for eight days from 2 November for the call to mass and people appreciated the difference. At San Giuseppe al Trionfale every Friday at three o’clock I was asked to let the death bells ring to commemorate the death of Jesus. Those who work or cannot go out appreciate these things ”. Volunteer for S. Egidio, he worked for 4 years in the reception center of Castelnuovo di Porto, now he is waiting to find work. And then there is the music. “I dream of returning to the Capitol tower, inaccessible due to structural problems, once with Alemanno I managed to make the Patarina ring”.
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