He had time to graduate, but did not take care of the flower bed that he dreamed would be named after him, Ornella Vanoni. In an interview given to Corriere della Sera in September 2024, on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, he himself asked to be remembered with a flower bed.
“They dedicated the Lyric Theater to Gaber, the two Piccolo offices to Strehler and Grassi, the Palazzina Liberty to Fo and Rame, the Studio to Melato. For me there is nothing left. For this reason I made a request to Mayor Sala: dedicate the flower bed in the center to me“, asked the Milan artist. The only condition: “I want her to live. Now. ‘Ornella Vanoni’s flower bed, cared for by her’. I will take care of it myself. I will plant flowers and tomatoes”. Fabio Fazio’s guest on Che Tempo Che Fa he reiterated the concept: “They give everything when they die, if they did it when they were alive, a person would be happier”.
The joy that Vanoni was able to express Last June 11, when the University of Milan awarded him an honorary master’s degree cause in ‘Music, Culture, Media, Performance’. A title that the Milan university wanted to give him to celebrate him as “an innovative interpreter of Italian music and an artist capable of reflecting and interpreting his own time, but also as a dynamic and creative symbol of Milan”. “I never studied, I was a slob. My parents would have gone crazy with joy to find out I had a degree,” the artist said at an awards ceremony a few months before his death.
