Novecento de Alessandro Baricco

Ultimately, who is Novecento? This prodigal child of music, an adopted orphan, raised on a liner he never left, a story from the last century, a bit unbelievable it must be said, can we, in the end, manage to form an idea of him?

A trumpeter, Tim Tooney, tells us how he met an extraordinary jazz pianist on the liner Virginian, a true city of glass and steel launched at full speed across the Ocean.

We imagine the 1920s-30s, an imaginary Ellis Island: abandoned at birth on this liner where he was born, adopted by the crew, he never set foot on land. D.

Lemon Novecento… But something goes wrong, we don't quite know what, it's as if Tim Tooney saw himself there, reliving a buried past, before us, distant, perhaps tinged with melancholy, who knows… Yet, this story, with its fantastic tale-like appearance, is filled with celebration and spirit.

Novecento… his spellbinding music, the greatest pianist who ever played on the Ocean, inner voices, a storm of brass and accordion… But still, we wonder what we are watching. A narrator who pushes us to witness his own metamorphosis?

A man from an uncertain time who lets himself be invaded by this best friend he summons at every turn? Where exactly does this take us? How far does this patchwork narrative go, which challenges our boundaries? What are we actually watching: a concert, a hallucination, a tribute?