SYNOPSIS

At the dawn of the year 1800, not far from Venice, stands the Sant’Ignazio Institute, a cross between an orphanage, a conservatory, and a convent. For years now, it has been home for Teresa, a young woman with a special gift: a visionary talent that allows her to listen to the world around her and transform it, animating it with a new, contemporary, timeless music. An enchantment… that is shattered when reality makes an incursion and brings her back to her duties. Because in the convent everyone calls her “the Mute”, a scullery maid who lives silently and alone. But things are about to change for her. While the convent is in turmoil for the imminent concert that the Chapel Master, the arid and despotic Perlina, is to conduct in honor of Pope Pius VII who is soon to visit, Teresa makes an exceptional discovery: a piano, brand new and never used, hidden in the convent’s storage room. She can finally translate the music in her head into reality! An exhilarating and solitary experiment… until one night, guided by Teresa’s strange melody, a small group of musicians who live in the convent peep into the warehouse: they are Lucia, first violin of Sant’Ignazio, and her friends, Prudenza, Bettina and Marietta. Soon, won over by the magnetism of Teresa, who creates songs like a pop composer of our century, the girls form a close-knit group of rebellious musicians, giving life to a new music that the Pope (and the world) certainly did not expect…

Gloria! speaks of the imagination, inventiveness and talent of all women composers who, like dried flowers, have remained hidden in the pages of history

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

My goal was to set a fictional story in a precise historical context full of details. From Johan Stein, a piano maker, to the election of Pope Pius VII in Venice, from the decline of the Serenissima to Lucia’s compositions that correspond to those of the only orphaned composer whose work has survived to the present day, Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen. I took a lot of care, in general, with the verisimilitude of this story even though, truth be told, it is full of fantastic flashes, musical leaps in time. But it also has the ambition to show the actual conditions of these musicians in their time.

With costumes, set design and photography we worked in this direction: apparently it is a proper period film with a lot of care in the colors, in the pictorial references and in the details of the scenography. The starting point is therefore philological and only from there could the most “fantastic” aspect start, which is instead delegated to the inner world of the protagonists and their musical creations.

It was a long process to prepare the actresses both to create a close-knit group of sisters, and to step into the shoes of excellent musicians. In fact, they studied for months with a violin and cello coach to try to blend in with the rest of the orchestra which is instead made up of real musicians and choristers of baroque music.

Another thing that was central to me was the editing of music and rhythmic research: many sequences were choreographed in space like theatrical scenes and rehearsed and rehearsed on location. Only the camera operator was given the freedom, shooting mostly with a handheld camera, to experiment and move within scenes whose movements and rhythms had already been predetermined.

BIO

Born in 1988, Margherita Vicario is an actress and singer-songwriter who graduated from the European Academy of Dramatic Art. During her academic years she wrote the EP Esercizi Preparatori and Minimal Musical, her first album as a singer-songwriter. She wrote the B.A. thesis in Performing Arts on the use of popular music in Brecht’s political theater and deepened the study of the Dalcroze method, a system of music pedagogy based on learning musical rules through listening and the use of the body. In 2014, she toured her first concert show LEM LEM – Free Musical Experiments around clubs and theaters. In the meantime, she worked as an actress in films and television series (Woody Allen, Lamberto Bava, Marco Pontecorvo, Pappi Corsicato).
Pursuing careers as both actress and musician, she released her second album Bingo with Universal in 2021. She works with artists such as Francesco Guccini, Vinicio Capossela, Vasco Brondi, Lo Stato Sociale, Raphael Gualazzi, Elodie, Rancore, la Rappresentante di Lista and many others.
In 2023, she co-wrote with Anita Rivaroli music alongside Dade and directed her first feature film GLORIA! produced by tempesta, Rai Cinema and tellfilm.

CAST

Teresa GALATEA BELLUGI
Lucia CARLOTTA GAMBA
Bettina VERONICA LUCCHESI (LRDL)
Marietta MARIA VITTORIA DALLASTA
Prudenza SARA MAFODDA
Il Maestro Perlina PAOLO ROSSI
Romeo ELIO
Il Governatore NATALINO BALASSO
Donna Lidia ANITA KRAVOS
Cristiano VINCENZO CREA
Fidelia JASMIN MATTEI
Giacomino GIOELE PAGURA