I think such a dream will never return

Pesaro city of music welcomes a new exhibition project which features the "pop music" as a mirror of our most recent history and as an instrument for exploration and interpretation of the great political and social transformations of that period.

After stopping in Bologna, the exhibition "WE. They weren't just songs" comes to the Adriatic Coast. Organized by the Municipality of Pesaro - Department of Beauty and Sistema Museo, the exhibition opens to the public from Sunday 12 July at Palazzo Mosca - Civic Museums , place of the city's cultural identity, and at the Museo Rossini, the new museum dedicated to the son of an era that generated the first ante litteram pop star: Gioachino Rossini.

Visible until January 10th 2021,, the exhibition is a 360-degree event. A great representation of recent Italian history from 1958 to 1982: twenty-five revolutionary years in all social, ethical and economic aspects of the our country, told through music, which has been able to speak its language, describe its facts, breathe its climate and give back its emotions.

With the Patronage of Ministero dei Beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo and of the Marche Region, as well as of FIMI, RAI, SCF e SIAE, the exhibition is produced by Bibibus Events and curated by Gianpaolo Brusini, Giovanni De Luna, Lucio Salvini, with the contributions of Fabri Fibra, Marco Tullio Giordana, Vittorio Nocenzi, Giorgio Olmoti e Omar Pedrini, to guarantee its historical/scientific rigor, high cultural value and a strong didactic/educational mark.

Enclosed between two hugs, that of Domenico Modugno on the stage of Sanremo 1958 and that of Paolo Rossi on the night of Madrid when in 1982 Italy won the World Cup, the exhibition proceeds chronologically to touch every aspect of social life, costumes, news, work and changes in the ethical and moral convictions of those years.

As a constant counterpoint, 100 Italian musical masterpieces, selected in the repertoire of that period, constitute a key to reading and deepening. A "pas de deux" between music and society, where lifestyles, fashions, interpersonal relationships and even social issues themselves are influenced by each other and vice versa.

The exhibition itinerary is divided into fourteen thematic areas able to involve both those who lived that years in first person, as well as the younger generations, in a common immersion path in the Italian collective memory. From the great immigration to the northern cities of the late Fifties, up to the disengagement that shaped the Eighties.

The itinerary starts from Palazzo Mosca - Musei Civici with the sections: "Volare" I think a dream like this never comes back, "The Train of the Sun" how beautiful is the city how alive is the city, "The Boom" the change of the profile of cities and countryside, "Carousel" the advent of consumerism, “Abbronzatissimi” the conquest of leisure and mass holidays, “The Surf's Army” young people as a new social subject and “Wonderful Thought" with the long journey of female emancipation.

The itinerary continues at the Rossini National Museum with the sections: "There was a boy like me" the social claims and student movements, "Countess" workers' struggles, "The locomotive" terrorism, "Rebel music" free radio stations, "Saturday night fever" discos, "Splendid Shining" the ebb that will start the hedonistic 80s and eventually "The Mundial" the night that changed us forever.

Le opere video provengono dagli archivi delle Teche RAI, oltre che dall’Archivio Nazionale del Cinema d’Impresa di Ivrea, un centro di conservazione, valorizzazione e diffusione del patrimonio audiovisivo prodotto dalle imprese italiane.

The audio diffusion is on several levels: from the music diffused in the various halls, to the songs that can be listened individually thanks to the latest technologies, to the directional speakers for the vintage videos. The 100 songs chosen, using a criterion of maximum inclusiveness, from Peppino di Capri to Francesco Guccini, from Patty Pravo to Fabrizio De André, are able to convey, even to those who were not there, the profound sense of that music and those years.

The iconographic repertoire, accompanying the exhibition, comes in part from the priceless Publifoto IntesaSanpaolo archives and in part from the historical archive of il Resto del Carlino , whose images, intended for newspapers, magazines and illustrated weekly magazines of the time, are able to return the gaze of the news photojournalists and their great ability to represent the multiple Italian realities in an acute, profound and precise way.

The video works come from the archives of the RAI Teche, as well as from the National Archive of Corporate Cinema of Ivrea, a center for the conservation, enhancement and dissemination of the audiovisual heritage produced by Italian companies.

The exhibition is set up by the designer Francesca Seminatore, with the audio-video installations by Daniele Perrone.

The catalog published by ELI - La Spiga with photos and a historical-critical textual apparatus by the curators of the exhibition, is an unmissable souvenire for the visitor, whith its fascinating insight into the unique history of the Italian imagination.