Opera Poster
Smisurata Preghiera
United Colors of Naples
Size
cm 70x100
cm 70x100from 199,00 €
cm 35x50from 99,00 €
a4 [21x30]from 65,00 €
cm 50x70from 120,00 €
Color
Rosso Cara
Rosso Cara
Frame
No frame
No frame
Black+ 79,00 €
White+ 79,00 €
Wood+ 79,00 €
€
199,00
✓Free express shipping · Italy and the EU.
Framing adds to the delivery time.
Framing adds to the delivery time.
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About this piece
"Per chi viaggia in direzione ostinata e contraria."
Smisurata Preghiera, Fabrizio De André.
When I started my Civil Service — compulsory back then — I managed to start on exactly the wrong day.
Conscientious objector, they called it.
Back then, by the military and civilian standards of the time, military service was for real men, civil service was for spineless cowards, half-men.
And so on and so forth.
Anyway, I started my Civil Service in a tiny town in the lower Benevento area, right on the border with the province of Caserta.
A terrible place. A nightmare.
I started on the 4th of June, 1998.
There was the Neapolis Festival on, Deep Purple were playing.
Technically, I missed my first "return to base" on my very first day of Civil Service.
The next day, the town hall officer told me he'd seen me heading to catch the train, and that he'd already alerted the relevant military district.
What a bastard.
That repressed little jobsworth also told me that when I walked along the town's main street, I had to be careful — I had to walk on the right-hand side of the main square.
Because the right side was for the decent young people, the left side was for the rough, bad ones.
An absolutely hideous square. A proper eyesore.
Badly built, funded with the '80 earthquake money.
An eyesore with a fountain in the middle.
I was put in charge of manning the radio and/or phone for the civil protection and/or Red Cross.
My job was to call the ambulance if needed.
Nothing ever happened in that little town or nearby.
Just the odd elderly lady, nothing serious.
Until, after a couple of days on shift, I got a call from a mother screaming in tears, something like:
"Help, help, my little boy's got his head stuck in the steering wheel of the bumper cars at the pumpkin festival in XXXX (another middle-of-nowhere village)."
Without missing a beat, without laughing, I took the call, alerted the ambulance, went home, packed my things, and left — after just 3 days — my beautiful Civil Service posting in a terrible town in the lower Benevento area, to start reporting for medical checks at the military hospital in Caserta instead, for about 180 days.
And it was right there, on the train back — a regional train that stank of everything — that I decided they would never, ever have me.
Never, ever.
Never.
Every Opera Poster is made by hand, just for you. There's no warehouse of finished pieces — each one is created only when you order it.
Every Opera Poster is a one-of-a-kind piece of art, signed, dated and embossed. With a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.
Every Opera Poster is made in Naples, with love — plenty of it (assaje, as we say around here).
Available with a frame.
Technical details
| Technique | Letterpress + Intaglio |
| Paper | Fedrigoni Acquerello White 390gsm |
| Edition | Limited |
| Signature | Hand-signed |
| Hallmark | Embossed UCN seal |
| Origin | Made in Napoli |
Delivery and packaging
Free shipping in Italy and across Europe. Ships within 7–10 working days of your order (up to 13 with a frame or in 70x100 size), express delivery in 24/48 hours.
Each Opera Poster is shipped in a tracked rigid tube with double internal protection. For framed sizes: double-layer packaging with reinforced corners.
From
€199,00
Specifications
Technique
By hand
Paper
Fedrigoni Acquerello White 390gsm
Colours
mixed spot colours
Edition
A unique piece, free from any serial fate
Signature
Hand-signed
Origin
Made in Napoli
How it's made
01
Typographic design
The text is set and balanced by hand, in search of the right rhythm between empty and full space.
02
Made by hand
Letterpress inks on Fedrigoni 390gsm paper. Every pass is unique: the pressure leaves its mark on the back, too.
03
Signature and hallmark
Each piece is signed by the artist and blind-embossed with the UCN seal.
Good to know
We're not a print shop. We're a craft workshop in Naples, where every piece is born from a dialogue with the song, with the artist's story, with what those words meant to the people who lived them.
Every piece that leaves our workshop is unique. Not as a marketing line, but by nature: letterpress is not a perfectly repeatable process. The mark stays.
— The UCN Workshop, Spaccanapoli