In 2006, when “Heroes Temporis” was released, Daniele Cutali interviewed Giancarlo Trotta and Luca Contegiacomo for MovimentiProg; ten years later, with the release of the World Edition, we go back to some of the questions Cutali (who meanwhile has become a well-known author) asked them… and we even added some.
….2006:
How and when was the Magni Animi Viri project born? Please tell us about your musical background, too.
We feel as if the project has always been a part of us. First of all, we have been friends for a long, long time. However, we have different origins, from a musical point of view, and we merged them together through a long process. We come from Salerno, far from all the most important cities for what concerns the record business – but also economically. For this reason, we couldn’t give up. Ever. Many years ago, when we started working on “Heroes Temporis”, we knew the issues we would have to face. We started working on this record in late 2002/early 2003 and we finished it in 2006. Intense times.
Could you explain us what your name means?
There are lots of reasons why we picked “Magni Animi Viri”, and they are all linked to what we do and what we are; it is our name and it represents what we are: soul and spirit more than body. It means “Men with great souls”, that soul that carries us, that makes us aware of ourselves, that makes us feel before we act. Music is this: a chance to make ourselves heard, maybe accepting to perform an action that is only virtual, imaginary, not real.
You started by composing a rock opera; don’t you think there have been a little too many in recent times, after PFM released “Dracula” and Ainur recorded “From Ancient Times”, inspired by the First Era in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Silmarillion”?
We know both those records quite well, and they are quite different from ours. We didn’t start from a pre-existing literary work: the idea is our, although it has universal validity: an inner exploration and reality seen as a dream, an illusion. Musically, we have to admit that there is something in common with PFM’s majestic rock. Giancarlo Trotta has a background in classical music, he isn’t a rocker who wrote an opera because it is fashionable. We have always dreamed to try our hand on a classical style that, here in Italy, is part of our national background. Sure, there are many rock operas, although nobody has written a masterpiece like “Tommy” or “The Wal”l for years; of course, in order to write a new rock opera it is necessary to have very clear ideas, skills and some guts in a world that prefers easy tunes. Mind, we have been nourishing this project for years, it is not something brand new… the production work took us four years.
Do you think that your rock opera, that joins classicisms, classical opera, orchestral music and rock is a mixture of the most important aspects of progressive music, or did you just ride the big wave of prog?
Each of us, including the special guests, comes from a different facet of music: classical, rock, prog, pop, fusion, metal… and we all have more than ten years’ experience. And we have also been friends for a long time, some of us since childhood, so we also share common feelings that sometimes can create something new: this is what happened to us, when we found out that we had the same ideas, the same thought spontaneously germinated. This is how our project was born: a common need and a common ambition, not something we had programmed in advance. We only ride the waves of our souls. Also, I need to tell you that while recording we did choose some kind of isolation exactly to make sure to avoid any influences from the current “big waves”, although we did listen to the other prog operas.
How did you decide to invite famous musicians to play in your opera, and how did you get in touch with them? Did they accept immediately?
More than an idea, it was a need that we immediately realised we had, seeing the scope of the project: the more you “feel” something, the more you realise you need to use the right tools to make it happen. So we obviously decided to speak with internationally renowned musicians, good enough to bring the quality of our project one step up. We chose a powerful and accurate rhythm section, able to give us a straightforward rock energy but with a perfectly clean delivery. John Macaluso and Randy Coven have proven to be absolutely the best in that. It was not easy to obtain their contribution, but we were happy to see that, as soon as they heard what was our plan, they jumped at the chance to come on board. It was really surprising.
You chose to self-produce your work, with brilliant results, a beautiful packaging and a fantastic press release. Obviously, you invested lots of money in this project. Have you tried to speak with some label to help you produce “Heroes Temporis”?
Magni Animi Viri comes from far away and, as we already said, it expresses us, our philosophy, our wishes. We worked for years in order to remain completely in charge of this project, even if we did receive offers from some labels, some of them quite prestigious. We had to sacrifice something, but we needed to do it with our own money, and we’d do it again.
Two powerful voices with an important timbre: Francesco Napoletano, a tenor, and Ivana Giugliano, with a style closer to pop music. Why did you choose to have both of them on your record rather than having a single voice?
At the bottom of everything there is the concept, something we can’t get away from. We decided what to do about the vocals after reading the lyrics Dr. Pietro Ruggiero, who is a teacher, wrote for us. Our choice on the topic reinforces our view of the dualism between rock and classical music. We needed to be able to express the most diverse feelings, that our main character lives in his own soul, during his dream which merges rationality and irrationality, joining the opposites. So, in order to represent this all, we chose to use two voices so completely different from one another.
Is there any literary or philosophic work that inspired you more than others to write “Heroes Temporis”?
No. As I already said, we lack a literary inspiration. Mostly, this all comes from Dr. Ruggiero’s idea: he took inspiration from his past and from his imagination; and from our soul and sensibility. Obviously we belong to our culture and to our times, so of course there will be several unconscious inspirations; but the whole story comes exclusively from Dr. Ruggiero’s creativity.
As Lorenzo Barbagli explained in his essay about “The Lamb Lies down on Broadway”, the album by Genesis, every great fantasy adventure featuring heroes or anti-heroes, a discovery of the most hidden parts of one’s soul and a metaphoric reflection on one’s life confirms what proved by the US scholar Joseph Campbell: all adventures man creates share a common topic; “Heroes Temporis” seems to be no exception: it talks about dreams and the key moments of a man’s life through allegories. Why does man always feel the need to travel in his mind?
Yes, you are right, “Heroes Temporis” is not an exception to what Campbell said, probably no rock opera can be. This is because people are always searching for themselves, for the immaterial substance that make them, a delicate and complex bundle of emotions, feelings, thoughts. Probably we are just looking to solve all doubts, to free ourselves from the nonsense that, paradoxically, keeps pushing us towards the unknown within us and therefore to the depths of our mind, of our dreams.
Do Magni Animi Viri plan to compose non-operatic progressive music, sooner or later? Are you already working on your next album?
A musician must always think about the future, but what we created is so peculiar that we ended up living in the present, both because we are enjoying the satisfaction this work is giving us and because we are focussed on promoting it, in Italy and abroad. That’s why we are not working on anything else yet, even though we have plenty of ideas.
…2016:
Here we are, ten years later, with “Heroes Temporis World Edition”. How many things have changed?...
True, much has changed. The world itself has changed, especially the technologies; music changed along everything that goes with it, in particular the market. The lives of many of our friends changed, too: Randy Coven unfortunately passed away two years ago, Marco Sfogli last year replaced Franco Mussida in PFM, you became a successful novelist. And we have changed too, even though we never stopped thinking about “Heroes Temporis”.
The best way to celebrate your record’s tenth anniversary is with a new edition.
True. Still, what really brought us to release “Heroes Temporis World Edition” (that has been ready for a while now) is not a wish to celebrate. The first reason why we are re-releasing it is a charity we have been supporting for some years now. We have decided to donate all the profits for the sales of this new edition to the association Heroes Temporis for Autistic Children, a NPO whose aim is to finance the opening of a “game-and-diagnosis” ward in the MerClin clinic in Campagna, province of Salerno. Such ward, dedicated to children, will also be integrated by a clown-therapy team. We decided to donate the profits of this new release rather than of the older one because of course the volume of its sales, after ten years, is constant but relatively low.
You said that is the first reason… so what is the second?
It is a less noble reason, linked to the great reviews we got for our first album. We have received positive feedback day-in, day-out for ten years, from old supporters, new listeners, journalists and curious bloggers. Such a huge interest made us decide to restart working on the opera, creating an international, English language version that could be sold worldwide, also boosting the profits (that, I’ll repeat it once again, will all go to charity).
So, in came Russell Allen and Amanda Somerville.
We were hunting for two great international vocalists, but we were looking for something different from the original duo, an operatic singer and a pop vocalist. The first name that came to our minds was Russell’s: we think he has one to the best and more passionate voices in rock. Egoistically, it would have been great to have him with us as we are fans of Symphony X, Adrenaline Mob, Star One and Allen-Lande. We thought we would have really loved to work with him… and we did. Russell re-recorded all the songs in the original version with unbelievable feel and strength. And he did it all with no overdubs, no “copy-and-paste”; you can hear him breathing, you can hear the breaks and every tiny flaw… he is an amazing professional.
With Amanda it was different. We knew her for having worked with After Forever, Edguy, Kamelot, Epica and Avantasia, but we had not immediately thought about her. Later, as we were thying to decide who to contact, we happened to listen to those bands and we realised what a fantastic rock voice she has. She also was a perfect professional. Working at a distance, we didn’t have a chance to see her recording our songs, but the result is amazing.
Interesting to see that Clive Riche is in the album as well.
Interesting, yes, and his was a decisive presence. What a character he is! A perfect voice who added some artistic eccentricity in this serious, focussed work. Clive is a great actor and a dubber/voiceover artist – and a vocalist. And thirty years ago he was a lawyer; he lived in the USA, then he came back to Europe and chose to move to Italy. Besides what he did in the world of cinema, he also is a great jazz vocalist. We are very happy to have him with us.
What’s next?
We hope first of all to see the ward opening pretty soon. That’s why we kept to self-producing, while the international distribution will be in the care of CdBaby and Alliance Entertainment: the record will be in over 15,000 music stores around the world. It is also possible to donate through the website http://heroestemporis.org
DANIELE CUTALI (Turin 1968) has been writing about progressive music for MovimentiProg and several magazines. In 2003 he contributed to the collaborative essay Racconti a 33 giri. After seeing several of his short stories published in anthologies and winning competitions, he released his first book in 2014: the anthology Come vivere su un’isola vicino alla luna (How to Live on an Island by the Moon, Giovane Holden Edizioni) and then with the novel Il lato a sud del cielo (The South Side of the Sky, Libro Aperto International Publishing). He is a regular contributor to Sugarpulp Magazine (www.sugarpulp.it) and keeps a personal blog, Premere il play e rimanere in pausa (http://danielecutali.blogspot.it).
MAV HEROES TEMPORIS info:
MAV World: www.mavworld.net/en/
Associazione Heroes Temporis ONLUS (NPO): http://heroestemporis.org/index.php/en/
Never Again - official lyrics video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdeE1F6mIHc
CD Baby: www.cdbaby.com/cd/magnianimiviri
Synpress44 press office: www.synpress44.com
