Talking with Susanna

Viviana Dragani is a professional actress, voice talent, and vocalist. She recorded in 2010 the soundtrack for the RAI mini series "The Swing Girls" (2010) together with the vocal trio "The Blue Dolls". She performed in the role of the singer Nuccia Natali.

Viviana also performed in the fiction "Violetta" (2011) for RAI, Italian national TV, she performed the role of an opera singer on stage.

The radio program is called Italia Eco and it is like an echo coming from Italy. It has been our radio for twenty years. Radio Boston is international radio, meaning it broadcasts programs for local ethnic communities scattered throughout the Boston area. We know that there are many Italians, but there are also many Irish, so we have the Irish program and the Greek programme.

So we have a program whose target is a specific community and I lead the one precisely for the Italian community. We try to enhance the events that are organized here in the area for the Italian community. We also recently started collaborating with the Italian consulate, which obviously does us credit and then we broadcast Italian music, therefore pop rock, contemporary music. And this is very beautiful.

Because on Italian and American radios, beyond the Maneskin...there are never many Italian artists who are broadcast. Indeed, I would say that they are the only ones. So we’re trying to make contemporary artists known here in America as well. And then another goal of our program is to enhance the Italian language, the study of the Italian language. Here, unfortunately, there is a need to enhance the study of the Italian language, to promote it because we have noticed a boom in recent years, a decrease in enrolments. For example, in American colleges today there is a tendency to study other languages, Arabic, Chinese. So we are trying to do this work also, precisely, in collaboration with the Consulate to promote the study of this language which is beautiful and truly worthy, including literature and culture in general.

But in Boston, you also lend your voice in commercials...

Exactly, I’m a radio speaker and even if that’s how we want to define Voice over talent, that’s what it says here.

Which means exactly?

VoiceOver is voiceover So a Voice Over Talent Arts or Voice Over Actress, what do you want to call it? You are a person who lends your voice to needs of any kind, for example for advertising, corporate videos, training, including therefore distance learning training. There are so many opportunities and obviously what I prefer to do are advertising, because there is the possibility to express, let’s say, feelings. Today we know that commercials tend to move certain strings, touch certain strings and move emotions a bit. And so my favorite thing is this advertising and using the voice in an emotional way. And yet the soon, obviously for any type of requirement.

When did you discover that you were talented and passionate about wanting to use your voice like this?

Something happened when you was little. In short, have you had any experience that then led you to understand that this was your path?

But there wasn’t a specific moment when I decided. I want to do this, it was all very gradual and I think when you have a spark inside, let’s call it that, of artistry, then when you have it you have it and you absolutely have to express it. It’s an urgency that isn’t something you do for money or it’s not something you do, because you decide, it’s something that decides for you, it’s a bit the opposite and therefore I’ve always had the need since I was a child, to express myself artistically.

ecause in a musical in which I danced they were simply looking for backing vocalists and so I auditioned to be a backing vocalist, they said to me But do you know you’re in tune? Of course you also have a nice timbre. I said Ah yes, gosh! And so they advised me to study to improve. In short, perfecting the technique that I didn’t have because I had never studied seriously with anyone and therefore I started with private lessons.

Then I entered the Conservatory, I studied opera singing at the Conservatory for two years, then I realized that this was not my path, because I was already passionate about swing anyway. In any case, a phase of modern singing, even pop, and therefore I abandoned the Conservatory, albeit reluctantly, in my second year and dedicated myself full-time to these shows, to these concerts they organized around Italy and also for Europe. However, we have been to Switzerland, we have been to Casablanca, we have been to Turkey, to Ankara we have toured a lot with this vocal trio, proposing precisely the swing of the 30s and 40s. So vintage music with period costumes. It was really a show.

Worth seeing as well as hearing of course. And so I’ll tell you, there wasn’t a moment a bit of it happened by accident. This singing thing just happened by accident. They discovered me by chance and the rest of dance and the rocket speaker was also born there by chance. Because I said let’s try this thing it could do for me acting It could do for me and so there too I always acted in shows where I sang and danced and acted and it always came quite naturally to me. The diction. I studied it by myself, as a self-taught on books and if you have the slightest ear it enters your head quite easily, so I would say everything by chance.

So let’s say that in Italy, as you were saying now, did you have these experiences both musically and also on the radio?

Even in Italy I hosted a radio program which instead, if I’m not mistaken, was about books, reviews, book authors. And it was basically more about literature.

Another passion that I have is precisely literature, it is going into disuse a bit. I have a degree in Spanish literature. In fact, among the various albums, I also recorded a monographic album on Carlos Gardel, sung all in Spanish precisely because I love this language and I said, precisely because I loved poetry so much, which is musical literature.

That’s why I love it so much, because I understand the musicality behind it, precisely because I loved reading the great authors and I necessarily studied them. For my studies I decided to create a program called Volta Pagina on Radio Energy, which is a local radio station in Turin. So for seven years I conducted this program on Radio Energy, until then, in fact, I changed course. But it was a wonderful experience, where I also learned how to interview people, how to put them at ease. And all these skills, however, I then brought with me.

Now you have also mentioned an album of Carlos Gardel’s hits and let’s say there was therefore, before this album which has just been released, there were other experiences as a singer, in addition to this album which if I am not mistaken is tango.

Tango, sung. Yes, we are used to the tango as something that is danced, but in reality it was born as a sung tango and then it became purely instrumental and therefore I wanted to recover these beautiful songs with very passionate lyrics to make them known in Italy, because they are not very known. There are not many reinterpretations of these songs by Carlos Gardel and Messi and I think this is a good work.

You can look it up on Ebay it’s with a sextet, so a slightly bigger formation. Yes, violin, double bass, piano, in short. The bandoneon, obviously, which is the main instrument.

Instead you also had another experience, a pop album...

I recorded a pop album of unreleased songs. It’s called “The Memory of You.” You can also find this on the main digital platforms. If you want to listen to it and it’s songs again this time that I didn’t write, I didn’t compose anything, I was an interpreter and the composer is called Domenico Centrino. He composed the music, he composed the lyrics and and this is also an album of great value, because the arrangements are really well done and there is an orchestra, an orchestral arrangement behind it and with soloists, of course, who sound absolutely live. There’s any sampler sequence about it, so it’s a really good album, well done and very romantic. And I absolutely recommend it.

We’re going to look for that too. And compared to the album that just came out and clearly also to the video that we’re waiting for in a couple of months, are you going to do something else with respect to the album, I don’t know, maybe a concert or something that takes it around, promotes it?

We’re trying to promote it right now. Obviously on social networks. Yes, the idea would be to take him around, but here in the United States, not in Italy. So I’m on the lookout. In fact, I’m making an appeal, I’m looking for talented jazz musicians who want to tour the Boston area with this project, which in my opinion is really special as a project, it’s not trivial. The music is not trivial at all. The texts are not only in Italian, by the way, but they are also in English, so it’s perfectly usable. In short, here and even there is a passage in French which was a bit of a challenge for me. Because precisely, I speak fluent Spanish, English, but not French.

So was that a challenge?

Yes, because it is an album with many suggestions and one of these suggestions are the French chansonniers who inspired one of these songs. So it’s a really diverse album. And so I recommend not listening to just one song and saying oh well, because each song is in its own right. So listen to them all because truly each one is a painting in its own right and is called “oneiric lyrics,” because the leitmotif is precisely the dream, the dreamlike dimension and also the opposite, that is the disillusionment when dreams somehow don’t come true.

Thank you for letting us into your world, for telling us a little about yourself, our readers thank you for this availability, for this meeting and maybe in the future we can meet for another project, for another thing you are doing, do you want ?

When you want, “any time” as they say here.