“It’s as if I was sorting through my cupboards and that I could no longer put on certain clothes. » Listening to some of her compositions again after confinement, Barbara Carlotti found that several of them no longer corresponded to her: “We all came out groggy from this traumatic moment and, in terms of melody, harmony, text, they were telling something that no longer interested me. » In 2020, the musician and singer preferred to surprise her audience with Corsica, island of lovean album of covers of songs typical of the region where his family is from. “A form of cultural reappropriation”she says.
“Rome allowed me to see what my next album would look like. After the pandemic, I needed breath, light, and Italy awakened this desire in me, for openness and lightness. »Barbara Carlotti
But, once this identity crossroads had been made, she had to dive back into her creations from the world before and sort out the raw material that was still exploitable and what she now considered less relevant. To do this, it was in Rome that Barbara Carlotti landed, in October 2021, in the stunning setting of the Villa Medici, where she landed a residency of around twenty days. She goes there for a short week, first. Then two other stays follow, in December and then in the spring of 2022. “I mainly knew Rome through the great Italian cinema that I admire, that of Fellini, Pasolini, Antonioni. I had been there, but I had forgotten how beautiful it is a city that turns your brains upside down »she says.
At the Villa Medici, she was assigned a bedroom-office “bare, with high ceilings, large windows that let in light, a fridge, plates”. At night, she walks in the gardens of holm oaks and orange trees, sees films shot nearby, such as roman holidays, by William Wyler (1953), or The Big Bellezza, by Paolo Sorrentino (2013). During the day, she goes down to the Place d’Espagne, wanders the streets and, once back at the Villa, strolls through the long corridors of the building: at each bend a sculpture or a fresco emerges. “The feeling of being immersed in a childhood dream or in The beauty and the Beast, by Cocteau. »
Elsewhere in weightlessness
One evening, after a dinner in the center with friends, the director of the place, Sam Stourdzé, drags him into the towers, climbing the endless stairs. “Up there, in front of the panoramic view of Rome, illuminated by night, I was blown away and I cried with joy. I could take in at a glance all the geography that I had surveyed on foot. It’s a very powerful feeling that I had already felt on the heights of Sao Paulo “, remembers Barbara Carlotti, who, for her fourth album, Love, Money, Wind (2012), went to glean inspiration, particularly in Brazil.
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