Topolini, mici e pinguini innamorati

The proposal

A fantastic zoo in swing time: the social history of an era, told by the Sorelle Marinetti!

Topolini, mici e pinguini innamorati (“Mice, Cats and Penguins in Love”) is a show that recounts, in a light-hearted way yet rich in anecdotes and information, the repertoire of the “syncopated song” of the 1930s and 1940s, with particular attention to the “animal strand”: all those songs, penned by the best writers of the day, whose protagonists were animals.

An entertaining lesson in social history, enriched by a selection of amusing songs performed by the Sisters Turbina, Scintilla and Mercuria Marinetti (in real life Nicola Olivieri, Marco Lugli and Andrea Allione).

Il pinguino innamorato, Il gatto in cantina, La canzone delle mosche, Maramao perché sei morto, La sardina innamorata: all songs that set up a fantastic zoo in the service of swing and of the much-needed escape from the here and now (a regime in its death throes, the economic hardship caused by sanctions, repressive laws, the approach of war).

Setting aside the age-old tradition of the fable with animal characters (Aesop, Phaedrus and their more modern heirs), one reason is certainly to be found in the cinema programmes of those years, which from the mid-1930s began to show the first Walt Disney cartoons, the Silly Symphonies, whose title was Italianised in Italy as Sinfonie Allegre.

The light programmes of EIAR and the whole host of artists who gravitated around them immediately sensed the great success of these animated shorts and set about creating little songs in tune with that fantastic world right away.