The hug

The Dream is the passionate and moving civic oration that Roberto Benigni dedicates to the European Union, "the smallest continent in the world that lit the fuse of all revolutions." The actor warns us of the most fearsome enemy of peace, nationalism, "the fuel of all wars, an obsession with the nation above all else, even God, a disease that disguises itself as patriotism," whose true engine is fear, especially of one's neighbor.

And so, every year, from the Second World War to today, the entire world burns over 2 trillion euros in military spending, resources handed over to hatred, mistrust, and fear. Benigni senses the darkness looming over the present, just like Beethoven who, two centuries ago, in the midst of the Restoration, felt the need to set Schiller's Ode to Joy to music, a powerful Enlightenment antidote to the repressive climate established by Metternich, with newspapers under surveillance, artists placed under special surveillance, and student gatherings prohibited. With a powerful and revolutionary ethical gesture, Beethoven concludes the Ninth Symphony with a hymn to brotherhood and multiculturalism, introducing human voices for the first time in an instrumental work, in a surprising dialogue in which the instruments sound like voices and the voices like instruments.

At the beginning of the fourth movement, the composer entrusts actual instrumental recitatives to cellos and double basses, writing on the draft score, "Let us seek, friends, something to sing." And so the themes of the previous three movements return to greet us, but are gradually discarded by the basses; the first seems too painful, the second (the scherzo) too light, the third (the adagio) too tender. But when the oboes announce the theme of the ode to joy, the cellos and double basses exult and sing it in turn, "here we have found it," we read in the drafts.

The baritone's first words are not Schiller's but Beethoven's himself: "Friends, not these sounds, let us sing another song, more grateful, more joyful." Thus the way is opened to joy, the divine spark capable of uniting beggars and princes. The phrase "All men shall be brothers" will be repeated several times throughout the entire movement, up until the soloists' farewell in the final coda. "Embrace one another, multitudes! May this kiss go to the whole world!" If people invested in trust, beauty, science, and the arts, the face of the world would change. Benigni thus embraces Schiller's invitation and takes stock of the path taken: "England centuries ago, with the Magna Carta, took the first step and told the people 'you are free'; France with the Revolution said 'you are sovereign'; we Europeans must take the final step and tell the world 'you are brothers.'"

It is no coincidence that in 1985, the Ode to Joy became the official anthem of the European Union, a warning to overcome divisions in the name of universal brotherhood. Ultimately, all it takes is a little courage and faith, the same sentiments with which Beethoven was able to break down the musical conventions of his time, in search of new paths, new sounds capable of embracing all the peoples of the world.


Mauro Tabasso
NP June / July 2025