Torino Olympics

[I had a YouTube video here of a long sequence of the Italian national anthem as sung during the Torino Olympics and various other sporting and military events - sadly, this video is no longer available. Just before the second go-round (with the athletes on the podium), the commentator says "Qua si rischia di commuoversi" - "We risk feeling moved here."]

Feb 23, 2006

I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, partly on the family TV, partly on my laptop with the new USB digital terrestrial receiver I had just installed. I thought I had also recorded the ceremony, and had big plans for that video, but something weird happened in the formatting: so far I can't find any way to edit what I captured.

Which is very frustrating; I was hoping to give you an edited, subtitled edition as a cultural commentary. So we'll just have to pretend that you watched it, or can get a recording from somewhere, and are able to replay it in your head with my commentary.

I particularly wanted to make a sing-along version of Italy's national anthem, as I've already done for India's "Jana Gana Mana". This would be useful even to Italians, because practically nobody knows the words. (This used to surprise me - in the US, there are many occasions to sing the national anthem, and it's taught at schools so everyone knows the words, even though the melody is difficult to sing well.)

Though the "Inno Mameli" (Mameli's Hymn) was sung very well during the Olympic ceremony, I couldn't follow the words, so I looked them up. Now I understand why no one knows them - the language is antiquated, formal, and difficult to make sense of if you don't have the same classical background as Mameli himself. And it appears that only the first verse ever gets sung.

During the parade of athletes, the background music was all American pop and disco from the 1970s, which I found highly amusing. When Spain entered, the song was "Daddy Cool." But when the Italian athletes made their entrance, they got Italian music (of the same period), specifically Lucio Battisti's Una Donna per Amico. Battisti being dead, the new Olympic theme song was conducted (and, I assume, written) by Claudio Baglioni, another long-time pop star.

I was initially pleased that the head of the Torino Olympic committee made his speech in three languages. But it quickly became obvious that he did the English translation himself, a vice of many Italians who think their English is fine because people can generally understand them. Being more or less comprehensible is sufficient for everyday purposes, but, when you're speaking to an audience of 2 billion people worldwide, you should get a native speaker to write a good translation for you. There is no such word as "valorize" in English! (Okay, there is, but it's rarely used, and never used in the sense of the Italian word valorizzare, which can be translated as "to exalt the value of".)

At least he kept it short. Italians do love to hear themselves talk, and in a more local context he could easily have gone on for half an hour.

You can hear the Inno Mameli here - click on Ascolta l'Inno in the upper right of the page.

Other Olympic Notes

The Italian press made a fuss over the fact that one Italian athlete baldly admitted he doesn't know the nation anthem. He's from Alto Adige, aka Sudtirol, an area that was ceded by Austria to Italy after World War I. In order to keep the Atesini (Tyrolese) happy with their Italian citizenship, the federal government gives them special privileges, tax breaks, and funding that other regions don't enjoy. Their culture is under no threat: most of them speak German as their first language, and some never learn Italian well, though required to study it as a second language at school In spite of all this, a recent (Austrian) poll showed that a majority of them would like their interests looked after by Austria - ungrateful brats.