Lecture 21

Musician Max Tooney goes to sell his prized Conn trumpet to a music shop, where he plays the instrument one last time. The shopkeeper recognises the song as one on a record matrix he found and asks who the piece is by. Tooney tells the story of an infant found abandoned in the first class dining room of the four-stacker ocean-liner SS Virginian on 1 January 1900. Danny Boodman, a coal-man from the boiler room, names the boy Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900, after himself, the fruit crate the boy was found in, and the year, and raises him as his own.

In a frontier landscape at the beginning of the 20th century, gunmen descend on a remote farmhouse, determined to exact revenge. Their target, a doctor — alone with his son and daughter — tries desperately to protect his children. Inevitably, bullets fly.

French silkworm trader Hervé is married to the beautiful Hélène. When an outbreak of disease ravages European silkworms, Hervé must travel to Japan to retrieve healthy eggs. After a long journey, Hervé finally arrives at a village where he can buy them. He becomes infatuated with a young concubine and goes to great lengths to see her again. But, when war breaks out in Japan, the concubine flees, forcing Hervé to return home to his wife.

June, 1816. A French navy frigate ran aground on a sandbar off the coast of Senegal. Attempts to free the board were futile - the crew had no choice but to abandon ship. Since the available boats were not enough to accommodate the entire crew, the team built a raft. It accommodated 147 people: soldiers, sailors, several passengers and officers. The plan was for the boats to tow the raft. But the cable broke and the raft drifted into the open sea. For those who were on the raft, a harsh and cruel struggle for life began.

Seemingly stranded and enthralled like a somnambulist: a female figure amid a rocky, dried-up riverbed. Motionless, exposed, and yet turned inward. Now entwined in the branches of the sparse vegetation, now lying on the delicate fissures of the parched ground, from these convergences and from the interplay of images arises a sort of approximation, or analogy.

After entrusting his creation to a large number of performers (first Eugenio Allegri, for whom the monologue was written), Alessandro Baricco has chosen to give voice himself to his most iconic and beloved character: Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon Novecento.

The story of a pianist born and brought up on a ship. Adapted from the book by Alessandro Barrico