EXCLUSIVE: The New Music Video For Phoenix’s ‘Ti Amo’

Ti Amo. I love you. But it’s not just romantic love that interests French synth-pop superstars Phoenix. Their new song ‘Ti Amo’, from the album of the same name, is a love letter to Italy itself: from festivals in Sanremo, to Franco Battiato, to melted gelato.

The new video for the song is no different; not only does it draw on the beauty of Italian heritage, set in the magical Teatro Bibiena in Mantua, but also looks at the romantic nature of tourism itself, with a storyline set around a hapless, starry-eyed tour guide, who wants to be on the stage himself.

In the video, created by La Blogothèque in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, Phoenix’s Thomas Mars abandons his tour group to perform with his bandmates Christian Mazzalai, Laurent Brancowitz and Deck D’Arcy, around the stage, corridors and boxes of the theater, all shot live on 35mm film in one continuous shot. The real star of the video, however, is the Teatro Bibiena itself.

Teatro Bibiena is a stunningly beautiful, surprisingly small Baroque theater in the Italian town of Mantua. At only 25 by 17 meters long, it’s a small bell-shaped space, decorated with a wooden geometric ceiling, dozens of arched boxes, and monochrome frescoes. Originally intended as an academic lecture hall when it was first built in the 1760s, guests soon realized that the space had amazing acoustics, and it was then also used to house music and theater performances. A fourteen-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart even played there.