The journey of Peppino di Capri to Monte-Carlo, for the 64th Television Festival, felt less like a scheduled appearance and more like a return foretold long ago. It was as if the sea itself had opened a path between Capri and the Principality, carrying with it the shimmer of Mediterranean nights, the glamour of the 1960s, and depositing it gently on the Riviera where elegance still lingers like salt on the air. And at the center of it all was Champagne, the new series that tells the story of a singer who had long since crossed from man into legend.

The idea had been brewing for years. After shaping the story of the italian singer Gianna Nannini, director Cinzia TH Torrini was approached by Rai and the producers. They had only one conviction: that her gaze was the one capable of conjuring Peppino’s essence. For them he was not simply a musician, but a monument; a man who had smuggled rock and roll and the twist into the bloodstream of Italian music, reshaping an era while standing on the small, sunlit stage of Capri.

The script was entrusted to Michele Pellegrini and the young screenwriter Maria Sole Limodio. For two years they bent over their words, weaving threads of memory until the Faiella family themselves placed their blessing upon the project. Their presence was not ceremonial; it was a lifeline. Peppino, elderly now and fragile in health, could only rarely step onto the set, but his children stood in his place. They guided Francesco Del Gaudio, the extraordinary actor chosen to embody him, so that he might catch the shadow and soul of their father without falling into the trap of mimicry. Del Gaudio confessed that his transformation began at the auditions, when Torrini’s eyes kept returning to him, as though she had already seen the resemblance that was not of face, but of spirit. Lacking much archival footage of Peppino’s youth, he studied live concerts, listened to echoes of interviews, and clung to the tiny details whispered by the family—like his unstudied choice of perfume, “the first one he found.” Such fragments, seemingly small, revealed the truth of a candid man uninterested in appearances. Two vocal coaches prepared him carefully, while Edo, Peppino’s son, oversaw the music, tending to the soundtrack and the recordings as though polishing heirlooms.

By his side, like a figure drawn in chiaroscuro, stood Roberta, Peppino’s wife. She was portrayed by the radiant Arianna Di Claudio, who entered her role by descending into the hidden world of gambling addiction, so that she might understand the chains that bound Roberta’s heart. “I never saw her as an antagonist,” Arianna admitted. “To me she was noir—too much, perhaps—but touched with moments of sweetness.” Their marriage, violent with passion, laced with tenderness, spoke of a wider story: Italy in the 1960s, still scarred by war but stretching its arms toward modernity, prosperity, and light. Torrini, ever the painter of contrasts, translated this into images—the unforgettable beach scene, the playful scattering of bread crumbs, symbols of two worlds colliding yet yearning for one another.

The actors still carry in their voices the tremor of those final days of filming. They remember, in particular, a musical sequence where, for a fleeting instant, reality seemed to give way, and the truth of Peppino’s life slipped into their hands like water. That was the heartbeat of the work: not to construct a sterile timeline, but to seize a fragment of existence, alive with vocation, talent, and fragility. “If you want to put someone on a pedestal, make a documentary,” Torrini often said. “Here, the aim was different: to let the audience feel the emotions from inside, to think: this could be me.”

And so, when Champagne was presented in Monte-Carlo, it felt inevitable, like destiny fulfilled. The Principality’s glow seemed to answer Capri’s, two mirrors reflecting the same dazzling light. For Rai, the series was not an isolated venture but another stone in the path of musical remembrance, after Franco Califano and with Franco Battiato already waiting in the wings. Music, for them, is not only entertainment but cultural heritage, collective memory sung aloud.

Even the world beyond Italy leaned in with curiosity. At a lunch during the festival, Canadian and British colleagues, unaware of the song Champagne, laughed at first, thinking only of the drink. But curiosity turned to fascination; they wanted to know the story, to understand the man. And in that instant, Peppino di Capri ceased to be solely Italian. He became a bridge, a point of contact between cultures, a story crossing borders as easily as music itself.

Champagne is no simple biopic. It is an echo of an era, a hymn to an artist, and above all a universal tale of human talent and fragility. It carries within it both light and shadow, like the voice of Peppino himself. And as it echoed once more in Monte-Carlo, his story reminded us of art’s quiet miracle: that one man’s life, when sung with honesty, can become everyone’s song.

📷: Arianna Di Claudio su Instagram