Emilio Locurcio -

Emilio Locurcio is an Italian singer, songwriter, and actor who recorded the 1977 concept album L’eliogabalo with backing by Pierrot Lunaire.

Background

Emilio Locurcio was born in 1953 in Turin, Italy. Locurcio attended the Scuola di Formazione dell’Attore, the actor-training school attached to the Teatro Stabile di Torino, where he studied under theater critic Giuseppe Bartolucci, dramaturg and theater scholar Gian Renzo Morteo, stage and television director Franco Enriquez, and theater director Aldo Trionfo. He also studied graphic art with Raffaele Ponte Corvo and sculpture with Mario Molinari.

Locurcio took up songwriting in Turin and pursued theater work through the Teatro Stabile circle. In 1972, Locurcio organized a short Piedmont tour for Claudio Lolli and opened the shows with fellow Turin songwriter Enzo Maolucci. Locurcio joined the Compagnia dei Burattini di Torino for La festa dentro la testa, a 1973 children’s-theater project staged at Teatro Gobetti and schools around Turin.

In 1975, Maolucci connected Locurcio with Roman songwriter Ernesto Bassignano, who presented the singer-actor to Vincenzo Micocci, a former RCA Italiana and Dischi Ricordi A&R director who founded the Rome-based It label. Micocci signed Locurcio to a five-year recording contract.

Locurcio moved to Rome for film work and appeared with Rosalino Cellamare, later known as Ron, in the 1975 Vittorio De Sisti film Lezioni private. Cellamare introduced Locurcio to Lucio Dalla. Micocci subsequently placed Locurcio on one of the first releases for his new Una label, a spring 1977 split single that paired “Giovanna Labbromorto” with Geppi Patota and “Fiore delicato, uccello forte.”

Micocci remained reluctant to commit to an album, so Locurcio recast a group of separate songs as a work inspired by French dramatist and theater theorist Antonin Artaud. Locurcio drew specifically on Artaud’s 1934 Héliogabale ou l’Anarchiste couronné, a semi-fictional treatment of Elagabalus, the third-century Roman emperor known in Italian as Eliogabalo. Locurcio played the completed cycle for Cellamare and Dalla at his home in Rome. Both men agreed to participate, while Locurcio also recruited Claudio Lolli and Teresa De Sio. Micocci approved the project and enlisted Gaio Chiocchio to assemble musicians from Pierrot Lunaire and Crash for the RCA sessions in Rome.

Discography:

L’eliogabalo (1977)

Sources:

Research notes:

Maigret & Magritte — Locurcio curriculum: confirms the Teatro Stabile di Torino actor-training school and names Giuseppe Bartolucci, Gian Renzo Morteo, Franco Enriquez, and Aldo Trionfo. It also identifies Raffaele Ponte Corvo as his graphics teacher and Mario Molinari as his sculpture teacher. (maigret-e-magritte)
Archivio del Cinema Italiano: confirms Lezioni private as a 1975 Vittorio De Sisti production and lists both Rosalino Cellamare [Ron] and Emilio Lo Curcio in the cast. (Archivio del Cinema Italiano)
2017 Rockit history, preserved at Canzoni contro la guerra: gives the 1975 sequence in greater detail. Maolucci directed Locurcio toward Bassignano; Locurcio played Bassignano his songs; Bassignano took him to Micocci the following morning; Micocci signed him to a five-year contract. It also supports 1953 as the birth year and identifies the family background in Puglia. (Antiwar Songs)
Period IT press notice: a contemporary notice says Una was created in March 1977 and lists the Locurcio/Geppi Patota split 45 among the first three releases in April 1977. This conflicts with later ItalianProg catalog listings that assign ZBU 7013 to 1976. I used spring 1977 because the IT notice is contemporaneous with the release. (BHMPI Digital Library)
Birth-year conflict: IMDb and some film databases give 1951, but the Locurcio interview biography, the 2017 profile, Apple Music, and several Italian memorial sources give 1953. The 2021 il manifesto biography is the closest source to Locurcio himself, so I used 1953. (Il Manifesto)