The average age of residents at Casa Verdi is 85, but you wouldn’t know it to listen to the buzz in the hallways where there’s the looming threat at any moment that one of the musicians that has come to live out their golden years in the Milanese mansion could belt out an earth-shaking aria or reach for their cello. Giuseppe Verdi didn’t live to see the retirement home named after him himself, but that was the famed Italian composer’s desire — to leave behind a a self-sustaining residence as enduring as any one of his works that could provide shelter for artists that he knew likely had difficulty enough financially supporting themselves as it was in a tough profession and would be relieved of worrying about what life held for them when they could not longer be as active.
Yet if Verdi could see the fruits of largesse, he might be taken aback by how just active they are in Yvonne Russo’s invigorating documentary “Viva Verdi!” about this unique place where an impromptu concert could occur at any time in any corner of the building with centuries’ worth of professional experience in the house. With a warm welcome initially by Claudio Giombi, a 14-year resident who once shared the stage with Pavarotti in “La Boheme” and doesn’t appear to have left it as he guides Russo around the premises with gusto, the film shows how the senior citizens’ connection to their craft continues to keeps them engaged, even the ones who inevitably suffer memory loss and find themselves roused to reminisce by the music. Strolling around the property leads Russo to meets with Tina Aliprandi, a violinist who remains as sharp as her bow at 91, and Chitose, a Japanese soprano who gives voice lessons to college students after a program was established during the 1990s to offer residencies to those entering the arts who could use the housing assistance as well.
As music reverberates in the hallways, “Viva Verdi!” shows how it echoes throughout time as well for everyone who lives at Casa Verdi, connecting the musicians to their younger selves as well as the next generation and cuts across cultures when residents from around the world don’t necessarily need to exchange words to communicate with one another. Although Russo found the enchanting home difficult to leave herself, she always knew she was creating something that would allow her to return any time she wanted to and ultimately open the doors for others to see what a marvelous place it is. With the film now making the rounds for Oscar consideration with special screenings across the country, the director spoke of a decade-long effort to bring the story of Casa Verdi to the screen, getting to know its incredible inhabitants and making sure that the film’s score was as special as the rest of the music that makes its way into the picture.
How did this come about?
I was working at National Geographic as a series producer, and we were covering a story on Milan, about where the Milanese people travel, the non-tourist places. I was following a photographer named David Yoder on assignment who was taking me to all these great destinations. And he said, “You have to come to Casa Verdi. It was created by Giuseppe Verdi, Italy’s notable composer who willed his fortune to create this home for musicians who had no pensions at the time. It’s pretty remarkable. Let’s go check it out.”
At the time I was producing this for television, so I wasn’t really sure how it was all going to pan out, but when I had entered the home for the first time, I was just blown away by its essence. When I walked in for the first time, it felt like magic. I always say it’s like sonic colors that were floating through the hallways because I could hear these beautiful voices, just people singing. And one voice in particular was of a woman, a soprano, who I thought was maybe in her twenties, but I followed the voice and as I was walking through the hallways, I turned and looked and there was a room with this elder soprano singing and she was teaching a young Japanese student, giving her vocal lessons, but she had to have been in her eighties. She was dressed to the nines, wearing high heels, lipstick and she had gorgeous sunglasses on. She just looked like this diva, and [I thought] “Who is this person? This is pretty incredible.”
After that, we walked through the home and I saw music therapy and when I witnessed that, I just started bawling. It was tears of happiness because I was seeing all these people — some were in wheelchairs, some sitting in regular chairs, but they were all reading notes from a sheet — just doing their best to sing and to stay on key. And I had never seen this before and I wish I could tell the full story, but because I was on a particular assignment for Nat Geo, I couldn’t just spend time there. So I said, “One day I want to come back and tell this story.”
We finished our our show for Nat Geo and I had this time in in my schedule to figure out what I was going to do next. I realized what I wanted was to tell this story and I knew I needed a producer who had Italian roots, who appreciated opera and the arts, and it was really important to me that [they] cherish elders like I do, so I contacted Christine La Monte, who’s somebody I’d worked with in the ’90s, and I asked her if she wanted to come on board and join me. She said yes and we asked permission from the board of directors of Casa Verdi to tell the story and we spent our own money and paid for ourselves to fly to Milan.
It took several years, but we raised money independently from the studios or from streamers at the time because we wanted to own and control our content and It takes time and a lot of effort. I was doing this while I was also directing a series and commercials, and in between the two, I would raise more money, go back and shoot some more and come back. It was quite a process, but it was the only way that we could do it,
It now looks well worth it. Did the subjects you end up honing in on immediately reveal themselves to you on those first visits? Or did it take some time to figure out who you should have in the film?
It took a little time. Everybody was really eager to tell their stories. Once they knew we were there to produce a documentary, they were all like, “Oh my gosh, like you’ve got to come to my room or my apartment.” Because the home itself, there’s one side of it that’s for independent living for people who are fully engaged and active and out in the world, but still live at Casa Verdi. Then there’s the other side of the house that’s more of the hospice side [with] mostly people that are just not as active as the others. But they were saying, “Come to my side of the house.” There were 60 guests within the house and we visited with many of them. The selection process was really challenging because they’re all so vibrant and beautiful. But it was a matter of those that were willing to really let us in in the sense of we are going to need access to them over and over again for a few years. I also wanted to make sure that their sons or daughters knew that we were capturing their life stories and that we had access to their archives and information. Some of them were saying, “Yes, this is exciting. We want to be involved.” And then there were some that we couldn’t have [that] access or we couldn’t even find their family members.
You’re alluding to a part of this that must be pretty exciting when you meet the residents and then do the archival search to illustrate the stories and see them their younger years actually performing.
Yes, like you’ll see in the film, Giombi opens up his suitcase and says, “Here’s my life in photos and he literally dumps all the pictures on his bed and looking at these images, this is decades of work and life and stories.” We had so much access to photos and it was a little more difficult to find the footage. Some of the performances were digitized, but we had to do some deep dives and that was also part of the selection process because we need to be able to tell their stories and understand the way that they lived and the fact that they’re still on stage today. We had a wonderful archival producer named Veronica Brady, who worked on a number of documentaries and she really took a deep dive and sourced tons of footage. It was great.
Giombi seems like a crucial figure in all of this, giving a grand tour of the place. What was it like to meet him?
Yeah, he’s the alpha of the house. He’s very active and engaged in the world and loves mentoring young students. And he says our lives are full of energy. Everything we give is energy — in your art, in your music, it’s all about energy and the way you resonate with your audience. He emphasized that so much and he actually practices a lot of energy work, so when he wakes up in the morning, he does these breathing exercises and he’s always working on his voice. He’s really in tune with nature, so being around him was just like having a hug constantly, just full of love and full of energy. I’m a lifelong learner, so I was just always asking him questions about what are the secrets to living a good life and I was constantly asking [all the residents] that because they were all so vibrant, so excited to share their stories.
Was there anything that changed your ideas of what this was?
The story was always evolving. In documentaries, it’s all made in post, so as you’re making it, we’re putting together these story pods and you never truly know exactly how it’s all going to be put together because it’s this big puzzle. But music is the key theme in all of this, and what was coming to me was music saved their lives. If it wasn’t for Verdi and his enormous generosity, creating this home for fellow artists so they can live in their retirement years without worry, that was pretty amazing, but the essence is the way that music connected everybody because of Verdi and his music and his legacy because these people have their own performances and legacy and the music connects them now and builds community. Music is this language that they use to communicate with each other when words sometimes are not as clear. The home in itself is like this living symphony.
What was it like to actually put music on this yourself?
People really love the music in the film, and Verdi’s presence, his essence, his spirit is alive in that house and we were lucky to license Verdi music, but knew that it would be source music in key points within the film. So it was a matter of working with our composer Nicholas Pike and saying, “I want audiences to feel Verdi.” So there’s like a moment when we go back to Verdi’s villa and I wanted the audience to just lean back and listen to this beautiful composition that takes you back in time [as] we enter the world of his room, you see his books and you get a feel for the energy that’s surrounding his house. We see how he composed — Verdi had a leaf-shaped teepee in the back of his house and in the mornings, he would go to his teepee and sit in nature and listen and tune in to all of the sounds of the birds and the insects and he used those sounds to create composition. And Nick recognized this bird sound that was really prominent in one of his compositions and connected [that] to the actual score and even composed “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” a beautiful aria with the famous soprano Ana Maria Martinez, and this song is being considered for best original song for the Academy as a contender, so that’s really exciting for us.
After carrying this for so long, what’s it been like to get this out into the world?
It’s awesome. It really hit home when we screened it at Casa Verdi in October. We showed it to the residents and the board and it was a dream come true because it’s a vow that you make to people when you’re going to ask permission to tell their story, so you can never give up. You’ve got to work through all the challenges and everything that it takes to get it done, so after all these years coming back and presenting it to them, I was so emotional. It felt so good to birth this into the world and now the hope is that it offers inspiration and a blueprint for not only senior living centers, but for music schools and opera houses and for all of us who have aging parents to understand and learn that their lives are so vital and that they still have so much to share. I want to be able to create workshops that can be as a blueprint for senior living centers throughout the world. So it feels really good to be in this position.
“Viva Verdi” will screen on December 3rd at 7:30 pm in New York at the Francesca Beale Theater at Film at Lincoln Center and December 18th at 7 pm at the Bedford Playhouse in Bedford, NY. It will also be available to screen virtually on December 17th via AARP from 5-6:30 pm PST.