Ottocento [English translation]

1Sing to me of this time

the rancor and discontent

of who is downwind

and doesn't want to smell

this engine

that carries us forward,

almost none excluded,

males females and singers,

upon a carpet of cash

in the blue sky.

Daughter, of my family

you're the wonder;

already mature2 and still pure

like dad's vegetables.

Handsome and daring son,

Versace bronze3,

son who's more and more capable

of gambling in the stock market

of raping on the run

and you, wife with large sweaters,

with many cravings,

expert in old junk,

silver boxes I'll gift to you.

Eighteen hundreds,

Nineteen hundreds,

Fifteen hundred silver boxes,

late Seventeen hundreds I'll gift to you.

So many spare parts,

so many wonders!

So many trade items,

so many pretty daughters to marry!

And so many nice valves and pistons,

livers and lungs,

and so many nice marbles to roll!

And so many nice red mullets in the sea.

Son, son,

poor son,

you were handsome, white and ruddy;

what concoction made you lose yourself in the canal?

Son, son,

(my) one mistake,

drowned like a chicken

to hurt me, stab me in my pride.

Me, me

who treated you like a son.

Woe is me, tomorrow will go better.

One little pinzimonio4,

wonderful wedding,

cabbages and strawberries,

and limpets and clams

fished in Zanzibar;

and some krapfen

before sleeping

and an awakening with a waltz,

and an Alka-Seltzer in order to

forget.5

So many spare parts,

so many wonders!

So many trade items,

so many pretty daughters to gamble!

And so many nice valves and pistons,

livers and lungs,

and so many nice marbles to roll!

And so many nice red mullets in the sea.

1. The song is a satire of our bourgeois and consumerist society and its frenzied pace, here compared to the similarly hypocritical and industrial society of the Eighteen hundreds.2. "Matura" in the original Italian line has both the meaning of "mature" and "ripe".3. Play on words with "Riace bronze", an idiom that usually indicates a man with a handsome physique. The Riace bronzes are two ancient Greek bronze statues of warriors that were famously found in the sea near the town of Riace.4. An appetizer made by dipping pieces of raw vegetables into a little bowl of oil.5. This whole stanza is sung in Pig German, or pseudo-German.