Ornella Vanoni, the voice of an endless time

From the hall of a somewhat gloomy Roman hotel, the most famous voice in Italy bursts out: “What joy!” Ornella Vanoni is in the capital to dub hers Seven women and a mystery, remake of the famous film by François Ozon from 2002 and now remade by Alessandro Genovesi (see box on page 40). “But no one will remember Ozon’s anymore.” But why did we go down from eight women to seven? “Let’s call the director right away, such a nice person.” Call the director. “Listen adoratoooo»He says in Milanese-Vanoni. Is there a more unmistakable voice in Italy? The more Ornella goes on, the more she has fun, she seems to have a taste for the future and shake off nostalgia. Yet there are many memories for this singer and actress and – once in a while the word is not out of place – icon, born in Milan on 22 September 1934. Milan Milan? “Sure, Porta Venezia,” she says. And among the great singers who made history, both Italian and European, were Ligonchio’s Eagle, Cremona’s Tiger, Goro’s Panther; she didn’t have a territorial nickname: “I was not an animal. I was not popular. I was dressed in black, gestures measured, so I was the snob, the bitch. I was mostly shy. So aggressive like all shy people. I was just Vanoni ». City singer, Milanese bourgeoisie, «the family came from Sondrio, the grandfather had made money as a builder, one of the first in Milan, and my father lost them all, as always happens in different generations. What did my mom do? The lady played canasta like all the ladies of Milan ». By the way: relatives of the politician Ezio Vanoni, the famous finance minister who reformed the tax authorities? “No, but when I sang for the first time, forced by Paolo Grassi, that day there was a meeting by Minister Vanoni nearby and I, terrified to perform in public for the first time, did not sleep for twenty days, and hoped that everyone should go and hear him. Instead nothing, the building was full ».

Milan of boom and rebirth. “At home we were happy, because the war was over, the bombs stopped raining, we had returned from being displaced, everything was starting again, my mother called the architect Cascella and had the apartment redone”. Pietro Cascella, the one who made Berlusconi’s tombs in Arcore? “No, not him, another one.” You said of Berlusconi that he has a beautiful voice. “Well, sure, he sang on cruise ships, it’s well known. And he was cute too. Not so tall, but handsome in the face. I knew him long before he started with television ». Was it in Arcore? “We went to dinner with him like everyone else, singers and actors, but in the old house, in via Rovani. At one point he asked me if I wanted to make Apicella’s songs », he laughs. «’If we do a charity record, I also do Apicella,’ I replied». You also did a TV show with the Knight, Award-winning. “Oh yes, I forgot.” But how did he live it? With the worries of the writers who publish books with its publishing houses and then feel ashamed of it or with ease? «But I see that today no one is ashamed anymore. Anyway, mostly I refused to do his sketches. He inserted stacchetti of his own invention into the program, terrible, which he expected me to recite. Here, those just not. And he: “Anyone who doesn’t want to recite my sketches will never work for Fininvest again”, that’s what it was called then ». Now Berlusconi wants to be president of the Republic, what do you think? «Well, I don’t understand any of these things, they don’t even interest me. Then the President of the Republic in Italy is not that he has all this power ».

At this point, the question about Craxism is inevitable. Milan to drink or «to throw up, as my friend Mariangela Melato used to say. I miss a lot, a very good actress, both as a comedian and as a drama ». Did Craxi also have a beautiful voice? «No, but above all she had a sense of time, she said a word and then dropped it, immersed in silence. He spoke as a great leader must speak ». She also said that he “gave us the illusion of being happy.” «Eh, yes, and it’s not cheap, I assure you. It was the eighties, bright years, and we were all beautiful, rich, happy. Up here, up there ». And Draghi, today, does he also give us the illusion of being happy? “Draghi gives us the hope of putting this country in order”.

But in short, she frequented all these intellectuals, it is the opposite of Mina. She was born an intellectual and then became more and more pop: now she even alternates with the conducting of Hyenas, but first there was the video Toy Boy with Colapesce and Dimartino; Mina instead begins with pop and then becomes more and more intellectual, with self-imprisonment in Switzerland, with absence. “But disappearing isn’t intellectual at all,” Vanoni jumps up. And what is it, then? “It was a choice, for the well-known reasons, then she rode it, she was smart, and it went well”. The reasons would be fiscal. “Eh. Besides, I’m not an intellectual. Just as Strehler was not an intellectual. The true intellectual must not make himself understood. If you are a true intellectual, others don’t understand shit. Virginio Puecher, he was a true intellectual: he was a critic and assistant to Strehler, he translated The cherry garden from Russian. And Strehler then had to translate him to the others, because nothing was understood ». And was Pasolini a true intellectual? «Ah, I loved him very much. Everyone was pissed off. He said: “The eyes of the left and the right have the same look”. He was Cassandra ». Today it has become a holy card, a brand that everyone likes. «Today if he came back they would kill him again, like Jesus».

Vanoni has always loved clear positions. His women, the women of his songs, are different from Mina’s. They command, they are in a certain way aggressive, in short, they do not suffer. Mina’s are more victims, more desperate. “But I’m desperate too. But if a love hurts, my woman leaves her heart there but goes away “. Was she ever left behind? Think about it for a while. “Never. But it’s not nice to leave. You take all the responsibility ». And Milva? “Milva, poor thing, has come the way Strehler would have made me go if I hadn’t gone away. Milva has come to take the Légion d’Honneur in France, not me ».

And here we have to talk about Strehler and of the well-known story with the great director, the years of the Piccolo, cocaine and sex, a great sentimental and cultural apprenticeship and then Vanoni’s escape, who saves herself. But how did his bourgeois parents, this older and more demanding man, take it and how did they explain it? “They didn’t explain it. They were speechless ». Was he coming home? Did they see him? “Yes, he always came at Christmas. Christmas was done by us ». Even there, a not so easy presence. “He always wore the tree, a real tree, a fir, which smells very good, ahhh, how good, today nobody does the real tree anymore (warbling in vanonian Milanese) “. In short, Strehler arrives with the fir tree, and it seems an edifying image, in short, like everyone else, he was celebrating Christmas, then it was not so terrible. But no, here is Strehler says Strehler: “If the branches weren’t bent right, they went down, he first hung real oranges, for days, with threads, and with the weight they pulled the branches down well, and then only after some days he let them be replaced with Christmas balls ». Did you go to the theater as a child? “I remember that my dad used to take us to the Manzoni theater, to see some ballets, and then above all we went to eat chocolate and cream in a dairy back there.” And did you go to La Scala? “My parents used to go there, all elegant.” If Piccolo means Strehler, Scala means Visconti. How it was? Was he really an asshole as it is handed down? “Asshole no, I wouldn’t say so. And anyway, before Luchino I met his nephew Eriprando, with whom we were engaged when we were young; we went out together, each with his young lady in tow, we gave each other a few kisses, even on the mouth, but never with the tongue, for heaven’s sake. He had those very high and arched eyebrows typical of the Visconti ». And did Luchino ever give her jewels when she grew up? He was famous for buying fantastic gifts from Bulgari or Codognato to Venice for his stars, whom he may have mistreated until recently. «No, the only thing he gave me was a bottle that was a nineteenth-century remake of Lucrezia Borgia’s poison bottle. Very nice, I still have it. Taken from an antique dealer in Florence, I saw it in the window and he gave it to me as a gift ».