It's been quite a year for musicals. In addition to box-office hits like Jon M. Chu's Wicked and the Disney sequel, Moana 2, there have also been arthouse offerings like Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez and Joshua Oppenheimer's The End, as well as such hybrid curios as Todd Phillips's Joker: Folie à Deux and Caroline Lindy's Your Monster. And that's even before we get to Barry Jenkins's Mufasa: The Lion King and James Mangold's Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown.
Now, those awfully nice people at CinemaItaliaUK have chosen to end their year with one of the genre's quirkier 2024 highlights, actor-singer-songwriter Margherita Vicario's directorial debut, Gloria!. Taking audacious liberties with musical history, this is set at the dawn of the 19th century in a Venetian convent-conservatoire for orphaned and outcast young women. It would make for an amusing double bill with Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez, Jr.'s musical version of Mean Girls.
Teresa (Galatéa Bellugi) is a servant at the Sant'IgnazioInstitute, whose female residents are given daily music lessons by the chapel master, Perlina (Paolo Rossi). As she attends to her chores in the courtyard, Teresa notices how the rhythms around her complement the choral and orchestral music being made by the various orphans and unfortunates, who barely acknowledge her existence. The Governor (Natalino Balasso) also resents her presence and her habit of making contact with his young son when he attends mass.
As Pope Pius VII is going to be crowned in Venice because his predecessor had been the virtual prisoner of Napoleon Bonaparte, he has announced that he will be attending a service at Sant'Ignazio. Perlina is entrusted with composing a new piece for the occasion, although the Governor is concerned he has lost his gift because he always has his girls play Antonio Vivaldi's `Gloria'. Lead violinist
Lucia (Carlotta Gamba) can barely concentrate on the score, however, as she only has eyes for Cristiano (Vincenzo Crea), the handsome son of a wealthy patron.
They have clandestine nocturnal assignations and Lucia hopes to be able to leave the institute and embrace the French Revolutionary tenets of liberty, fraternity, and equality that she trusts will transform Italian society. Perlina is a rigid traditionalist, however, and even consigns a gifted pianoforte to the basement, where it's found by Teresa, who quickly masters the keys having learned the kalimba. Moreover, she starts composing, as does Lucia, who hopes that her work might be included in the concert for the pope.
When she overhears Teresa at the piano with fellow musicians Marietta (Maria Vittoria Dallasta), Prudenza (Sara Mafodda), and Bettina (Veronica Lucchesi), Lucia is amazed to discover that `The Mute' can talk. However, she is perturbed to learn that she is an accomplished player and reluctantly agrees to share the instrument so that she can compose items to submit to Perlina for the papal mass.
He is suffering from writer's block and the situation is not eased by the fact he is being exploited by Cristiano (Vincenzo Crea), a dashing, but feckless chorister with whom he is besotted. He takes it out on Teresa by trying to marry her off to an ageing widower, in order to please the Governor, who doesn't want her around. However, she is rescued by his wife, Donna Lidia (Anita Kravos), although Teresa won't explain to the other girls why she has such a tortuous relationship with the Governor, when they share stories of how they came to be at Sant'Ignazio.
Frustrated by the fact that her friends prefer Teresa's upbeat style to her own baroque melodies, Lucia becomes frantic when she doesn't hear from her beau for 10 days. Her mood isn't helped when Perlina rejects her compositions without listening to them, even though he has asked Cristiano to find him a composer who would be willing to write anonymously, in return for paying off the debts the young man has accrued. Consequently, when she hears Bettina singing lyrics to Teresa's accompaniment, she flies off the handle and threatens to report the servant for using the piano and tells her classmates that they are to stop wasting their time playing this non-music.
Housekeeper Fidelia (Jasmin Mattei) warns Lucia about shouting at the Governor's son when giving him violin lessons. Perlina also criticises her when she defends Marietta for improvising during rehearsal. But she is pleased when Teresa commends a string quartet she has written and they are starting to get along better when Perlina sells the piano to raise some money to help Cristiano. Moreover, Luigi writes to inform her that he has been forbidden from seeing her again and she tries to commit suicide by slashing her wrists.
Teresa's prompt actions save her and her friends keep the nuns away while Lucia is being nursed. They also discover that the piano was bequeathed by its German maker to the orphans rather than Perlina and realise that he had no right to give it away. So, Teresa confronts him and threatens to tell Donna Lidia that her husband had rapaciously impregnated her unless he gets the piano back and plays Lucia's music for the pope. He agrees, but the girls lock him in a cupboard on the day of the performance and Teresa is found blue dress so that she can play the piano and lead the ensemble in jazzy piece that causes the Governor to have a fatal heart attack and Pope Pius to excommunicate them all.
After captions reveal that Napoleon closed down bodies like Vivaldi's Ospedale della Pietà in 1807, we see Teresa living with her son and Donna Lidia in some comfort, while Lucia, Bettina, Marietta, and Prudenza are touring Europe with their chamber orchestra and have been invited to play for Madame De Staël in Paris. It's a bullishly upbeat feminist finale and one that pushes it in the direction of René Féret's Mozart's Sister (2012) and Shelia Haymann's Fanny, The Other Mendelssohn (2020). But this remains a film that goes its own way, as it boldly avers that modern music had its roots in Venice three years after the abdication of the last doge.
In truth, the storytelling is a little flimsy and formulaic in places, while some of the commedia characterisation would seem clumsy in a pantomime. But Vicario, who co-scripted with Anita Rivarolli, captures the fluctuating spirit of the times in showing how the unholy alliance of church and state was beginning to lose its ability to subjugate women and the lower orders. The decision to suggest pederastic tendencies on the part of Perlina feels a bit unnecessary, as his Salieri-like foibles already damnhim. Indeed, with the exception of the institute's handyman (played by Elio) and the unseen piano benefactor, there isn't a single admirable adult male in the entire picture.
This seems fair enough, as Vicario is clearly seeking to draw parallels with a present day that hardly represents a golden age for the male of the species. As this is self-evident, she doesn't lay on the moralising too thickly and concentrates instead on the healing of fissures between the womenfolk, as they realise the benefits of standing together. This is where the basement jamming sessions come into their own, as Vicario and editor Christian Marsiglia show the quintet bonding over pieces composed by the director and Davide Pavanello. Production designers Luca Servino and Susanna Abenavoli, and costumier Mary Montalto also make noteworthy contributions, as does cinematographer Gianluca Palma, who combines intimate candelit groupings with atmospheric views of the lagoon on which Sant'Ignaziosits.
As for the performances, comedian Paolo Rossi makes a splendidly reprehensible cleric, while Carlotta Gambasucceeds in revealing Lucia's vulnerability even when she's at her beastliest to Teresa. French actress GalatéaBellugi similarly invests the silenced rape victim with an affecting dignity that enables her believe in herself and gradually persuade those around her to dance to her tune.