Tenor (Moving Out)

Moving Out, a play with musical numbers, features three characters (two sopranos and a tenor) and a small instrumental ensemble (piano/electronic keyboard, electric guitar and strings).

This work expands a work, written by Riccardi in English, that was performed at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D. C. on June 21st and 22nd for their 2016 Festa della musica. The new version, in Italian, was written in 2020 and premiered at the Teatro Torlonia, Rome on October 13th 2021. In this version, a new character and some side plots are added, and the text is extensively revised. In this stage work two opposing and complementary personalities are compared: a mature woman, Nora, who moved to the USA from Italy many years ago because she won a scholarship to Yale, and her daughter, Nadia, who believes her mother abandoned her by putting her career before maternal love. On the one hand were Nora's remorse, memories of the past and nostalgia for her roots; on the other, were Nadia's recriminations and criticism of her mother, but also her dream of a future in America. As a side plot, Nora is ending a difficult relationship and Nadia has just left her boyfriend in Italy. The interest in culture seasoned with a good deal of snobbery on the part of the mother and the daughter's desire to discontinue her university studies and to immerse herself in work as soon as possible. 

A glimpse of America--the America of business, of money--when a New York realtor of Italian ancestry, Ralph, enters the scene. He tries, but fails, to express himself in the language of his grandparents. 

The two female characters are described with lightness and irony. So much so that the tension between mother and daughter is transformed by their unwavering love for Italian food. That's the only true bond that Ralph maintains with the land of his ancestors.