Patrizio Roversi: “I leave Bologna and go to live in Venice to start over”
If travelers often pass through Venice guided by chance, there is a “tourist by chance” who would like to go and live there. To find out who is behind the tourist, the mind has to go to the show «Tourists by chance» and the protagonists who have made millions of Italians travel are Patrizio Roversi and Syusy Blady. Roversi, born in 1954, is from Mantua but Bolognese by adoption. Last transmission, Roversi protagonist in motion, a “slow tour of the Po Valley”.
Roversi, rumor has it that she wants to go and live in Venice. Say goodbye to Bologna?
“No no, it’s not goodbye. I work in Bologna, I have the production company ».
So are you going to commute? Is he already doing it?
«Yes, I did, the Guglie area in Venice is close to the station. Then, the train is like a bus, in a couple of hours you can reach Bologna ».
Why Venice?
«Coming to live in Venice is a project, a daydream. In fact, at the beginning, the dream was not mine, but of my partner, Mietta Corli, Milanese, opera director, who has often worked in Venice and – after the nights spent rehearsing a show – was shooting enchanted at dawn by the deserted streets. We did it again together, during the lockdown, and the dream became mine too ».
Being a “tourist by chance” – and not only – he has visited many places, from one end of the world to the other. What drives you to choose Venice?
“I have seen so many magnificent places, yet it never occurred to me to go and live there. Instead in Venice yes: without prejudice to all the relationships that I renew to bind me to Bologna, I would like to settle here, to change. Perhaps because of the historical moment, which I am living very badly: a restlessness takes me, an impatience with reality similar to the one I felt at twenty, and which in due course led me to escape from Mantua, where I was born, to arrive in Bologna “.
And now run away again?
«The first passage from Mantua to Bologna was the one from the first to the second age. Now that I’m moving on to the third one I feel the same desire to change, to go away. Mother dove? Since we still can’t go to Mars, I opted for Venice. Because it is a unique elsewhere in the world, indeed, unique in the universe ».
Many say it …
«We don’t want to fall into the cliché: we know that Venice is beautiful, that beauty is good, that there are no cars, that there is water, that you can breathe history and so on. Venice is also complicated, and in fact, before having the courage even to confess our intention to come and live there, we underwent a sort of initiation, we tried to overcome tests: distances, bridges, water buses, rhythms , high water, heat in summer and cold in winter, tourists ».
How did this test go?
«We have been attending it assiduously for more than a year and we have survived, indeed, for long periods we have” lived “happily. Maybe we are ready to become Venetians. But can we become Venetians? Our native friends have confirmed it to us. For many other places this is not the case “.
What do you mean?
“In a few months we ended up in a network of daily presences and human relationships: Claudio the professor who takes me by boat, Manuela who cleans the street and knows everyone, Marco who has the fish stall at the Guglie and who teaches me how to cook, Samuele the cook who uses Sant’Erasmo’s vegetables, Lorenza the tobacconist who makes me play superenalotto to find the money for the house, Alberto who makes the spritz, Sandro the neighbor who teaches us how to separate. And many others”.
Will he not retire?
«Venice does not seem to me to be the buen retiro, it is the place where I would like to end up quietly, indeed. In Venice there are many things that are wrong, many things that are worth worrying about and others that make you angry, it is perpetually in the balance, it represents the emergency par excellence, so there would be a lot to do, other than retirement: Venice is a great place to start over! ».
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December 17, 2021 (change December 17, 2021 | 09:10)
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