Ornella Vanoni, who died on Friday in Milan at the age of 91, was one of the most famous Italian singers ever. This happened because of the success of similar songs It’s endless, I will give you more, The music is over And One more reasonreleased in the sixties, and for his various participations in Sanremo and collaborations with other musicians, including internationally renowned musicians. However, he is also appreciated and loved by a relatively young and diverse audience, who have come to know him in recent years and not only for his music.
The immense respect that artists of various generations and musical genres have for him has led him since the 2000s and more recently to sing with many of them, even many of them younger than him. What favors this type of collaboration, besides mutual respect, is also and above all Vanoni’s ability not to take himself too seriously, his desire to do new things and his inability to adapt substantially to the crystallized role of a great and venerable artist of the past, which others of his generation have rarely rejected.
It has become commonplace to read his name among them displays musicians and singers with a following very different from him, are also famous, but each has its own niche and in a context that has changed a lot compared to the times when a transversal popularity like Vanoni’s was possible. In the 1910s, the interest of young audiences was stimulated, in part, by his occasional participation in talent shows and other television programs, while on tour in cinemas throughout Italy, he continued to do what he had always done and what he did best.
His popularity further increased after his participation in the Sanremo festival in 2018, where he had not attended since 1999: together with the songwriters Bungaro and Pacifico he performed the song. Learn to love yourselfis in fifth place. And his talent for duets, which was more or less constant throughout his career, later led him to accept subsequent collaborations even with singer-songwriters who, because of their ages, could have been his grandchildren.
One of the last songs Vanoni published, for example, was one of his hits in the seventies, I love yousung again with Elodie and Ditonellapiaga in 2024. Another era Saint Allegriaoriginally released on one of his albums in 1997 and covered with Mahmood. They are also widely circulated along with other remixes of the songs contained in the 2024 album Differentwhere he collaborated with other young artists, DJs and music producers, including Okgiorgio.
Even before that, in 2021 it was played a lot on the radio Toy Kidsa song written and sung with the duo Colapesce and Dimartino, and a video clip directed by Luca Guadagnino have also been released. This is perhaps the clearest and most famous example of the self-irony with which Vanoni was appreciated in the last years of his life.
The summer hit was later included on a special edition of Vanoni’s final album containing unreleased songs, Uniquewas released in 2021 and was produced and arranged by Mauro Pagani and Fabio Ilacqua. It is made of songs written or sung with Francesco Gabbani, Giuliano Sangiorgi and Carmen Consoli, among others. But there is also a cantata featuring the comedian and actress Virginia Raffaele, who is very good at imitating him, talking about Vanoni’s tendency to include a wide variety of artists in his projects and also to participate in non-musical projects, including the films of Alessandro Genovesi. But what a pleasant surprise in 2015 and 7 women and a mystery in 2021.
But Vanoni’s personality, candor, and humor primarily emerged on television, where over the years he was a frequent guest at events, mostly TV shows. What’s the weather like?hosted by Fabio Fazio. And it worked there too, with his own way of acting: when he was serious, others laughed, when others became serious he joked about it.
In general, he speaks very openly about his experiences: about the joints he often smokes, for example. And he was very direct in all his interactions, even on stage, as when distracted by lights preventing him from reading the lyrics, he said to the technician: “you can’t see anything, sorry”.
In television interviews, death is a recurring topic, as are sex, substances, politics: all topics about which he is frequently asked, also because those who ask his questions are sure of getting non-trivial answers and never rest on their laurels. Ultimately that is what makes him such a likable, appreciated and quite extraordinary character in the context of Italian television: his ability to improvise, creating unscheduled parts of the program.
