Riceviamo e pubblichiamo:
Scott Jeffrey is the composer and writer of the musical United We Stand, a musical about the unification of Italy playing at the Cockpit Theatre on December 9th. Below he talks to the Consulate about the realization of a dream which has taken 60 years to realize.
Scott Jeffrey was studying History in his A’level class over 60 years ago when his history teacher Christopher Wright went through European history as part of the course. The writer/composer remembers him talking about the fact that it wason this day a hundred years ago that Italy became independent, under the direction of the revered freedom fighter, Giuseppe Garibaldi who led his thousand volunteers into Sicily from Genoa in the North via Sardinia by boat to unify Italy and consolidate the many states of the Italian Penninsula into one, the Kingdom of Italy.
The writer/composer was hooked from that moment and has never lost his passion for this subject since that day. He was the secretary of the gramophone and music society at school and loved music. Scott Jeffrey says, ‘I always believed I had an ability for song-writing because melodies came into my ear and I would use a dictaphone to record bits of them until I had a song.’ When he was 21 and had just finished Durham University where he studied law, he started to write the book about the famous journey. He felt he ought to get to know the Garibaldi family if they were still around, so he reached out to Francesco Garibaldi, a direct descendent of the youngest child of Garibaldi, Riciotti who has been a firm supporter of the project ever since.
Scott Jeffrey’s parents took him to musicals as a child and because he was musical and thought this was a wonderful story and as good as any of the musicals out there, he started composing the songs for it. His dad encouraged him and said he had a talent for composing. To some degree, Jeffrey says he’s been as obsessedwith seeing United We Stand staged as Garibaldi was with uniting Italy, though he felt he needed help with the libretto and after a couple of attempts was put in touch with Bernard Kops, a dramatist who wrote the story based on Garibaldi mourning the death of his wife Anita in 1849.
‘It was a case of life imitating art. My late wife Barbara was a massive inspiration behind the musical before she passed away in 2000, she said it must be realized as she really believed in it.’Jeffrey says they were a very musical family and were always singing round the piano. He was a councillor in Barnet and realized that if he attended council meetings, he would never finish the musical so he decided to quit as councillor to pursue his musical dream. ‘In 2010, the director Tom Attenborough, the grandson of the late Richard Attenborough took it under its wing after a previous showcase at the Italian Institute which Jeffrey Pinnick OBE put together from the dozen best songs. Tom decided to put on a workshop at Pineapple Studios. However,until the performance at the Cockpit, it has never played in a theatre.
Scott Jeffrey says, ‘I am so excited for it to finally see the light at the Cockpit on December 9th with the wonderful director Michael Oakley and artistic director Steve Edis who work substantially with Trevor Nunn.’
Per acquistare i biglietti:
There is a discount code for readers of La Repubblica. If they enter Italy when purchasing a ticket in the discount code box, they get 10% off. https://www.thecockpit.org.uk/show/united_we_stand
Cockpit Theatre THECOCKPIT.ORG.UK 020 7258 2925
