Gianna Nannini and her unforgettable concert in Monaco

Three things you learn at a concert Gianna Nannini: that age is just a number; that rhythm is an innate gift, and that music doesn’t need a degree in languages ​​to be decoded. We are at Munichto the new stage of You are in the soul Tour – European Leg which sees Gianna Nannini return to perform live after a long time, and the thing that immediately catches the eye is that the Olympia Hall is not so much full of Italians who live in Germany, but of Germans with a passion for Nanninian rock. Some understand Italian, others – most – do not, and yet, to the refrain of timeless hits like Perfume, Photoromance, Beautiful and impossible And You are in the soulthey move their mouths in time a bit like we do when artists like Eminem or The Weeknd come to perform in Italy. «The audience understands the emotional meaning of what I sing: I think the Germans like the grain of my voice, but also my rock”, says Nannini a few hours before going on stage, sunk into an ocher leather sofa as if she were a little too lively a child. «It’s the best tour of my life”he adds with extreme conviction. «A particular playing together has been created: it’s like having a trotting horse between your legs. I just have to surf the wave, not overdo it: I have to play my specialty, I push from within», insists Gianna Nannini before remembering that the drummer who accompanies her on stage, Simon Phillipswho played for the Who, Toto and Mick Jagger among others, defined it as «the most erotic voice I have ever heard in the world.”

Together with the journalists who surround her as if she were a queen bee, between a sip of Pepsi and a handful of nachos, Gianna Nannini is a river in flood: says that many of his songs, like Radio Baccanoare still very current; she explains that, on tour, she often gets ideas for other singers and not for her; who listens little to today’s music even though she really likes Anna; and that, if it were up to her, she would abolish duets – «I’m not suitable, to do them you need a certain musical knowledge and you have to work a lot at it. I don’t rule out doing it one day, but for now it seems more like one commodification of followers”. When she recounts the various accidents she has survived in 2024 – from a broken fibula in February while snowboarding to a sternal fracture in July in Ibiza due to a road accident, passing through another blow to the foot in September -, one wonders how it is that this marvel here which apparently recharges itself with Duracell has 70 years old. I ask myself this especially when, at 8.05 pm, he goes on stage running and jumping like she was a twenty-year-old, wrapped in a red and white leather jacket that at a certain point she opens, revealing her black bodysuit. As he raises the microphone stand in the air like it’s made of foam when he sings Europe boy – and me breaking my back when my pen falls from the table – and smearing it on the back of the piano when it’s my turn to Beautiful and impossiblethe audience seems to have gone crazy. He screams, claps his hands to the rhythm, jumps and takes out his smartphone hoping to immortalize his favorite song at the right time – when Gianna sings Scandal a lady from the parterre wrapped in a dress studded with rhinestones runs as hard as she can towards the stage to get a better shot.

Luisa Carcavale

In the meantime, Gianna’s concert proves to be not so much a performance as a life experience which becomes stronger and stronger as the songs come alive, from Phenomenalwhich sees all 10,000-odd people clapping their hands in complete synchrony – we are, after all, still in Germany – at Wonderful creatureuntil to the grand finale with Magical nightswith the Olympia Hall shaking from those feet banging on the barriers that seem like the epicenter of an earthquake. Among waving banners – one recites Bratislava loves Gianna -, chains that hang and shine from above the stage, and ladies who move their lips to replicate the phonemes they hear, Gianna Nannini confirms herself as a stage animal like few others, a female version of Mick Jagger ready to envelop the audience with his embrace and his scratch. «You are in the soul»shouts from the stage in Italian to the audience, who, after Germany, will also be able to follow her in Italy – in Milan on 12 and 17 December (sold out); to Florence on 13-14 (sold-out) and 18 December; to Turin on December 16th, a Eboli on December 20th (sold out) and others Rome on December 21st (sold out). Waiting to continue his journey between Italy, Germany and Switzerland, taking to the stages of the most important European summer festivals in the summer of 2025 with Sei nell’anima – Festival European Leg 2025.