Le fiabe sonore

Not long before Christmas 1966, the Fratelli Fabbri editors distributed a promotional disc of “Le Fiabe Sonore”, with “I tre Porcellini”, free of charge in the newsstands. The following week, the first official issue, “Puss in Boots” by Charles Perrault, came out, accompanied by a large format (27x35) issue with splendid romantic and yet ironic, alluring, but modern illustrations.

Many of us, at the time, did not yet know how to read. It was our parents, therefore, who initiated us into magic, who opened the doors of fantasy to us, who introduced us to a world that would have enriched, bewitched, enchanted, frightened, amazed us. Week after week, we would learn to read and write also thanks to the Sound Tales, absorbing new and unknown words, not always easy.

The fairy tales came out continuously from 1966 to 1970, recorded on 45 rpm records and accompanied by beautiful books, illustrated by well-known painters: Pikka, Una, Ferri, Max and Sergio.

After having listened to them from our parents, we then relied on the deep and reassuring voice of Silverio Pisu (1937–2004) actor, voice actor, singer, writer and screenwriter. We curled up on the sofa on cold winter evenings, with the book on our knees, enraptured by the figures, with our ears strained to grasp the slightest difference between the written text and the narrating voice. Or, cold and feverish, we spread the fairy tales radially on the bed, took the vinyl record out of its case, and anxiously inserted it into the disc player. The little finger pressed, the button was lowered and in that small gesture there was an immense power, that of making sounds and images emerge, of evoking an entire parallel universe. We were the ones holding the magic wand, closing and opening the fairy door at will, at each rereading, at each re-listening.

Many other professional actors collaborated with Silverio Pisu including Ugo Bologna, Sante Calogero, Pupo de Luca, Isa di Marzio. The music was commissioned to a famous composer of the time, Vittorio Peltrinieri. None of us will ever forget the introductory song sung by the Radar Quartet, composed by Claudio Celli, Gianni Guarnieri, Dino Comolli and Stelio Settepassi, whose style wanted to resemble that of the more famous Quartetto Cetra.

Together with the closing song to the fairy tales, the memorable opening jingle constituted a sure sign of recognition of the series, with that drawl beginning that made the “there are” more like a “theereaaareee” …

A thousand there are

in my heart of fairy tales to tell.

Come with me

in my fairy world to dream …

You don’t need an umbrella,

the red coat or the beautiful satchel

to come with me …

Just a little imagination and goodness.

After the introduction, the real fairy tale began, scripted, adapted, modernized without taking away its charm. Each screenplay was characterized not only by the narrative voice of Silverio Pisu, renamed Cantafiabe, but also by lively dialogues and catchy songs such as the unforgotten ones by Little Red Riding Hood, the Nano Tremotino, and Cigno Appiccica.

A few masterful hints were enough to create the atmosphere, like the passage of time marked by a touch of the harp, capable of unleashing the imagination, appealing to multiple senses at the same time and making any word superfluous.

In all, about 150 illustrated booklets and as many records were released. Tales of the main European fabulists were re-proposed: the brothers Grimm, Andersen, Perrault, Pushkin and the lesser known Bechstein, Leprince de Beaumont, Gianbattista Basile.

Thanks to Fabbri’s fairy tales, an entire generation had fun with the hilarious Vardiello, and also learned — as Bruno Bettelheim explains — to manage their childhood fears, reworking inwardly, absorbing and making their own certain gothic atmospheres. How can we forget the fear aroused by the frightening witch of Hansel and Gretel, burned in the oven by the two siblings, by the Ogre of Tom Thumb who cuts the throat of his daughters, by the unjust accusation of witchcraft addressed to the protagonist of The Eleven Wild Swans, forced to silence because of love for her brothers? Sound tales taught us the clear division between evil and good, the boundary between licit and illicit, the sense of duty and the spirit of sacrifice, words that now seem meaningless.

In addition to single fairy tales, masterful installments of “The Adventures of Pinocchio” were also published, with the deceased Paolo Poli in the role of the puppet, of “Alice in Wonderland” and “Peter Pan”. The sound tales were revived in ’77, in the ’80s, in the’ 90s. They were then released for the first time on CD in 2003 and as an attachment to Corriere della Sera in 2007.

And now we say goodbye to you as Cantafiabe did, with that little song that brought us sadness and consolation at the same time, the sense of something that ends and then begins again, in an infinite loop that helped us to grow, to endure the return to normal life, to our labors as children, symbolized by the “beautiful satchel” of the introduction.

It ends like this

This short fable goes away

The disc clicks

And, you will see, in a while it will stop,

but wait, and you will have another

“Once upon a time” Cantafiabe will say

And another fairy tale will begin