How beautiful the city is!
This song by Giorgio Gaber (1939-2003), an Italian singer-songwriter and actor, is one of his first big successes (1969). During the Sixties (economic 'boom'), Italy witnessed some major changes, and many people moved from southern Italy to the more developed and industrialized northern Italy, or more generally from the country to the city. This very urbanization is the target of Gaber's irony: at the end of the song, the rhythm gets faster and faster in order to express the pressure of our lives nowadays. I come from the green hills of Umbria (campagna) and now live in this stressful (but fascinating!) city, which inspired me to create this video.
For first level students of Italian, who seem to enjoy this sort of tonguetwister at the end...
As a first task, they should recognize the four adjectives referring to the city, and their agreement when related to other nouns ('grande', 'grandi', 'piena', 'piene').
Instructors could also use this song to introduce/revise some common vocabulary related to the lexical field "city".
Have fun! Less