Riccardo Cocciante, composer
Long before Notre Dame de Paris became an international hit, Riccardo Cocciante had already established himself as one of Europe's most prolific and successful artists and composers. Riccardo Cocciante is a unique phenomenon in the international music industry, singing not only in Italian, Spanish and French, but also producing different productions for each of these three languages. In many countries, some of his greatest hits have become classics. With more than 40 albums to his credit, countless concerts, a rich list of prestigious musical collaborators, exploring all fields and creative processes, from composing songs for his own performance to composing with and for other artists, casting and directing young performers for his “Popular Operas”, he has tackled a wide range of musical expressions: from songs to musical works, from film soundtracks to rigorous theatre music. Growing up in a multilingual environment – born in Saigon (Vietnam) to a French mother and Italian father, he lived in Rome from the age of eleven – he has experienced various cultures and absorbed multiple influences, managing to explore very different artistic experiences. He is self-taught in music, which requires a strong will and a drive for perfection combined with a strong independent and cosmopolitan spirit. His meeting with Luc Plamondon gave rise to the idea for Notre Dame de Paris. A true global success. Notre Dame de Paris goes beyond convention, creating a genre of show that is faithful to Cocciante's ideas: a new form of contemporary “popular opera” rooted in the great European tradition of musical drama and blended with modern concert and live performance techniques. This marked the beginning of Riccardo Cocciante's second career as a composer of “popular operas”. From The Piccolo Principe to Giulietta e Romeo, while Notre Dame de Paris continues its incredible conquest of the world.
Luc Plamondon, author
Born in Quebec, Luc Plamondon is now one of the most highly regarded authors in France and Canada, having received the highest artistic honours in both Quebec and France. After graduating in education from Laval University and studying literature at the University of Montreal, art history in Paris, Madrid and Rome, and modern languages in London (where he was won over by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles), he discovered opera in Berlin. This was followed by a year travelling around the United States. In New York, he saw all the musicals playing on Broadway and in San Francisco. He was enchanted by Hair, the first rock musical, which would be the spark that led him, ten years later, to write Starmania, which was directed in Paris by Tom O'Horgan, the famous director of Hair. Returning to Montreal in the 1970s, he collaborated with Diane Dufresne, for whom he wrote 75 songs. Considered the first French-language rock singer-songwriter, he was called upon in the 1980s to work for artists of the calibre of Julien Clerc, Catherine Lara, Johnny Hallyday, Riccardo Cocciante and others. His career reached its peak in 1992 with Dion chante Plamondon, a tribute album dedicated to him by Céline Dion. Distributed worldwide, it sold two million copies. Gradually, Luc Plamondon's career as a lyricist gave way to that of a musical composer, with works such as Starmania, with music by Michel Berger, which was staged between 1978 and 1979. The show has been performed in several countries around the world to over 6 million spectators. In addition to this show, Plamondon wrote five other musicals: Lily Passion, La Légende de Jimmy (1990), Sand et les Romantiques (1992), Cindy (2002) and, of course, Notre Dame de Paris in 1998.
Pasquale Panella, author of the Italian version
Writer, poet and lyricist, he was born in Rome and began his career in 1976, after writing plays and collaborating with Enzo Carella. He became known to the general public through his collaboration with Lucio Battisti, which began in 1983 for Adriano Pappalardo's album Oh! Era ora, for which Battisti was responsible for the arrangements.
He wrote the lyrics for the songs on Battisti's last five albums: Don Giovanni, L'apparenza, La sposa occidentale and Cosa succederà alla ragazza. He also wrote for Amedeo Minghi and Mietta (Canzoni, Dubbi No, Fare l'Amore for the 2000 Sanremo Festival and Baciami adesso presented at the 2008 Sanremo Festival). Mango, Zucchero, Anna Oxa, Mina, Marcella Bella, Angelo Branduardi, Marco Armani, Sergio Cammariere, Grazia Di Michele, Mino Reitano and Valeria Rossi. As well as being a performer, he has been giving recital performances for years in which he reads (and interprets) the writings of Raymond Carver, Chet Baker and Louis Ferdinand. For Minimum Fax, he published the novel La corazzata (1997) and the collection of micro-stories Oggetto d'amore (1998). Among Pasquale Panella's most important works, the Italian version of the libretto for Riccardo Cocciante's show Notre Dame de Paris stands out in 2002, a true “rewriting” and not a translation from the original French. In this regard, he states: “For me, the romantic is real, and Cocciante's music, which I have listened to, is the score of a musician unleashed in his senses, gestures and inspiration, which transcends the boundaries of song and becomes romantic”. He returned to work with Riccardo Cocciante on the latter's popular opera Giulietta e Romeo in 2007. In 2011, for Mango's album La terra degli aquiloni, Panella wrote La sposa, the first single, and two other songs, Chiamo le cose and Tutto tutto.
