Typical Italian story. The other evening at the Pala Mandela in Florence Eros Ramazzotti interrupted his concert because a spectator had felt ill in the front rows in front of the stage. While waiting for some rescuers, the artist had made a flying joke: «You arrived ten minutes late. She was already dead. C*o, there are 18 of you, what are you doing?». The video of the episode was released by a fan on TikTok and of course it immediately went viral. When there is controversy to be made, social networks rub their hands and go wild. Shortly after the concert resumed and the fan, after the illness, returned to enjoy the songs.
Of course it didn’t end there. The president of the Florence Committee of the Red Cross, Lorenzo Andreoni, immediately intervened to underline the “defamatory attitudes” and the displeasure that “Ramazzotti took it out on our volunteers in front of thousands of people”. He discharged the responsibility for the delay of the “second team” on the order service of the staff of “Ramazzotti himself”. And then he reserved the right to evaluate “how to proceed against Ramazzotti himself”. In short, a national case.
Meanwhile, it must be remembered that the singer has always been very attentive to volunteering and is attentive in a confidential way, without making press releases or bombastic declarations. And then, let’s be clear, in an excited situation like a pop concert in a sports hall, the intonation of the words of those on stage is not always in line with institutional etiquette. Often the jokes can slip or they can “come out badly” or be misunderstood. But the story of the artist and his character help to give the right weight.
This time, as happens with disastrous frequency by now, the social flywheel has built a case on nothing with the regional leaders of the Red Cross indignant and Ramazzotti disoriented by the controversies. Result: his manager, the attentive Gaetano Puglisi, intervened to speak to the Red Cross clarifying that, as stated on the Ansa, «the video shows without any possibility of misunderstanding the playful and ironic intent of the artist act only to comfort the lady in the audience and to put the boys of CRI in the best conditions to intervene». President Andreoni’s reply was prompt and predictable (“We welcome with relief the clarification on his part, with which he specified that it was not his intention at all to criticize the work of the volunteers”) and an immediate invitation to Florence “for a greeting and a photo together with our volunteers. Peace made, all right, good but no encore.
Beyond the fact that – from Pink to Billie Eilish to Emma to the Maneskin – it is increasingly common to interrupt concerts to help spectators in difficulty, perhaps more caution and more antibodies to the most contagious and information-distorting virus of these times, i.e. social networks. It is quite evident that Eros Ramazzotti did not study «ars oratoria» with Cicero. Just as it is quite clear that some utterances must in any case be contextualized and, in this case, filtered by the inevitable excitement that runs through a great musical show. Beyond the controversy, closed, the case of Florence is another small invitation to take ourselves less seriously (everyone) and limit the indignation to the cases that really deserve it.