And on those 88 keys the music that you can make is infinite. You know there are 88 of them and no-one can tell you differently. So, he remains on board as a musician, never desiring to go ashore. No one taught Novecento how to play the piano, but he seems to be born to move his fingers on that keyboard. But in the middle of the night, a piece of fascinating music coming from the first class saloon wakes everybody up. The man dies due to an accident on the ship when the child is only eight years old and the captain decides to send him to an orphanage. Life on a keyboardĪ black stoker finds Novecento as a baby in a lemon box, abandoned on the piano of first class. Eventually, in 2022, Baricco himself enacted his text, available on RaiPlay. Four years later, in 1998, Giuseppe Tornatore directed a movie based on the monologue, The Legend of 1900. Italian publishing company Feltrinelli published the text the same year: the writer described this work as halfway between a play and a tale to be read loud. Novecento was meant to become a play directed by Gabriele Vacis and performed by Eugenio Allegri. He won several prizes and his works have been translated into a number of languages. In the same year, he founded Scuola Holden, a school for storytelling and the performing arts.

Novecento is the protagonist of a theatrical monologue named after him, written in 1994 by Alessandro Baricco, an Italian novelist, playwright, and screenwriter living in Turin. He seems to be at one with the keyboard and on that keyboard, he would live his whole life. One night he started playing the piano in the first-class concert hall, enchanting the whole crew. Born on a ship, he grew up in the engine room. Novecento has never in his life walked a step on dry land.

Alessandro baricco novecento