Balcony singing in solidarity has been a growing reaction to the coronavirus lockdown in Italy this weekend.
From the southern cities of Salerno and Naples, and the Sicilian capital Palermo to Turin in the north, residents of apartment buildings and tower blocks are continuing to sing or play instruments, or to offer DJ sets, from their balconies in a trend that is spreading from Italy across Europe to Spain and even to Sweden.
In one district of Rome neighbours entertained each other with a rendition of the folk song Volare, while in Florence the opera singer, Maurizio Marchini, sang the popular Puccini aria Nessun Dorma from Turandot.
Matteo Colombi, who works for the Florence’s water company, spoke about the response to a social media invitation for everyone who can play an instrument to go to their window to perform.
“In the flat in front of me, a couple with a small child appeared,” he said. “The mother carried him in her arms while the father played a children’s musical toy. They waved over at us and we waved back. We’ve never met.
“A little later I heard the sound of people using pans to beat out a rhythm. It turned out to be two elderly women, both small and physically frail, who were testifying in this way to their love of life and of the city. I took two pans myself and followed their beat. Then we said goodbye to each other and closed our windows as it was getting too cold to carry on.”
Claudia Bucchini and Andrea Zucco, who both teach music at the Fiesole music school also performed on their balcony.
The Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi posted his appreciation of a quarantined singer performing one of his songs from their balcony. A video, posted on Twitter by Alasdair Mackenzie, shows an unseen person singing Capaldi’s Brit-award winning song Someone You Loved. The star retweeted the video, commenting: “Amazing stuff! Stay safe.”
Videos of Italian citizens in lockdown arecirculating widely on social media as people sing and dance at their windows or on their balconies to keep up morale.
A recording made in the city of Siena in Tuscany has been viewed more than 600,000 times on Twitter. It shows residents singing the traditional Canto della Verbena about the city from their windows. One verse includes the phrase “long live our Siena!”.
The Italian singer Andrea Sannino has made a compilation on his Instagram feed that shows people singing his own song Abbracciame (Embrace Me) at their windows in Naples, his hometown.
The Italian tune from the 1990s, Grazie Roma, with the lyric, “Tell me what it is which makes us feel like we’re together, even when we’re apart” is also popular online.
Quieter neighbours have been using social media to encourage Italians to put up placards on their homes that read “andra tutto bene”, or “everything will be OK”, accompanied by a picture of a rainbow.