Giovanni was the richest, coolest, most elegant young man in town. He wore the finest clothes, rode the finest horses and was indifferently fluent in three languages: Latin, the Umbrian vulgar and northern French (the langue d’oïl of the trouvères); in the latter he loved to write and perform songs, in the style of those he heard on the streets of France during his business trips with his father Pietro - a merchant so wealthy that he now aimed to nobility, namely chivalry, through this very son of his, whom he nicknamed francesco both because of their transalpine liaisons and of the boy's attitude to freedom.

Words like franco, affrancato to nowadays stand for “freed from, non-subject to common laws”: porto franco, zona franca… Martina Franca!

Farla franca is “to get away with something wrong one did” – and that was the very nature of the young Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, later known as Francesco d’Assisi, poet, traveler and saint - holy patron of Italy. 

On the one hand, can we believe this John Elkann (with a musical twist) of the Middle Ages when he claims to have chosen poverty and advertises it as a lifestyle, the lifestyle? Can we buy it? What kind of poverty was that which he could have reconverted into wealth at a snap of his fingers? Isn’t that a mockery of real poverty?

What about real indigents, the ones with no choice?

On the other hand, let us capsize the question and see how it works the other way around: what if it was the very feeling of having no choice to make an indigent, a poor, of someone?

Francesco gave up the money, not the ability to make money, nor the entrepreneurial mentality and capabilities he had inherited from his wealthy and hard-working father. (By the way, ALL the Franciscan cofounders – Leone, Chiara, etc. – as well came from the wealthiest families of Assisi and were highly educated fellows.)

As a matter of fact, in a few years from the Saint sprouted a ramification of several strictly ruled and self-sustained monastic orders, which soon became wealthy enough that, by the end of his life (that is, in less than twenty years from the beginning of everything), Francesco decided to resign from guidance, for he felt that his original marriage to Madonna Povertà, constitutional of the order, had been betrayed.

In other words, if poverty is deliberately chosen by someone who thinks like a rich person, it ends up creating wealth even against their will.

How about that.

If instead you think like a poor, you make poor choices and create more poverty even if you do have money, or talent, or any other good: “For to everyone who has, will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” — Matthew 25:29

Whereas poverty is feeling of having no choice, wealth is feeling empowered to choose - at all times, with or without money in your account – to pick what you actually want, need, prefer, are attuned to, aim to, like best, is on your wavelength.

Sadly, only the rich are used to doing that. The poor generally give up, or give in.

Many pillars of Music history sprouted, just as Francesco, from musically wealthy families where a high musical education and proficiency was a base to be taken for granted: think of, recently, Jacob Collier or our Apulian Beatrice Rana, and then back in time the Bachs, the Puccinis, the Mozarts. (We care for DNA only when scared of a poor health heritage, instead of considering what good it does investing in it and cultivating it long term, throughout generations.)

Singers, too, can be rich or poor.

The good, rich singers choose their voice and take for granted that they can achieve the fine results they are envisioning, hence they carefully avoid voicing all that isn’t that result yet, till they feel that they can achieve it or an even better one (if they are open and inspired enough to be surprised).

They don't bother trying, they'd never lower their own bar: they design, listen and prepare till they are ready to make it happen.

 But for most singers, the poor singers, singing is squeezing out the sound that their body daily agrees to produce, matter right off matter. Such a muscular vocal behavior mostly hides insecurity, if not desperation: the unshakeable belief of being born poor singers.

You can’t really sing and you can’t really help it – so you just reproduce the voice you think you have inside, daily reinforcing your devotion to what sounds like you, but is in fact a form of self-narration like another, and mostly not a flattering one.

Yet you can tell what is good, when it comes to other. You do recognise beauty and righteousness, only you believe it is not for you to make it happen.

Good, "wealthy" singers open their minds and ears to the score; they surrender their bodies to a sacred inspiration that descends like a balm - for in the first place they feel entitled to a blissful intuition - then they’ll move out of the Muse's way, die for a second and wait for the right physical impulse that will translate that intuition into a wave of energy.

And they won’t settle for anything less than a miracle.

(Relax, don’t do it, when you wanna go it – sang some other Frankie.)

 For his predication Francesco chose, of the three languages he spoke, the Italian vulgar: was it to make sure that he reached everybody, for it was the humblest and most commonly spoken?

Nope, he chose it because it was the most beautiful and cantabile, the language by which one could reach God faster and better, thanks to a smoother legato (which shares the etymon with religio: a bond, a connection).

And then he sang and sange; the man sang all the time. In Italian vulgar.

As you’ll know, he’s one of the fathers of the earliest forms of Opera (as a developer of the Lauda and of the Sacra Rappresentazione). 

I was in Assisi last March for the first time in my life, on my way back from Milan.

I cannot tell exactly you what happened to me while I was inside Santa Maria degli Angeli, the basilica built around the Porziuncola - the tiny ædicule church that Francis restored with bare hands and eventually died in...

...but I can show you what happened when I came out of it about an hour later: a freakin' Ferrari had materialised out of nowhere. 

She was wearing her bridal gown. I took it as the sign I had asked for.

I am making plans like a filthy rich Maestra for filthy rich singers.

Stay tuned. Always.

Love,

Sara

“extremely good at this” (Graham Vick)

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