Sanremo 2023, Gino Paoli arrives and the Ariston ceiling becomes the sky

For Gino Paoli on the armchairs ofAriston there might have been no one sitting there. With the nonchalance of someone who knows what he’s carrying on his shoulders, he entered the stage without batting an eye. On his face the dark glasses, which he has always worn “to put distance between himself and the reality that surrounds him”. Accompanied by the piano and torchlight from the audience, he began with A long love story. With the timbre now almost spoken and his eyes closed, at the age of 88, the king of Italian music interpreters sang «When I saw you arrive/ Beautiful as you are/ It didn’t seem possible to me that/ Among so many people that you notice me.” With the same breezy style he captivated viewers with Flavor of salt. In a moment Sanremo seemed St. Gregorythe beach in the province of Messina which, in 1963, inspired Gino Paoli to write one of the most beautiful and famous songs of the Italian Sixties.

While Gianni Morandi affectionately introduced him to the public, Gino Paoli recalled when at the age of 15 he always found him around trying to learn something about music. «But the most beautiful was Little Tony. Once he came home from Sanremo and his wife had entertained with many men. Then he came to me in despair to ask: “You who know how to overcome a betrayal?” I wrote Although but I didn’t know anything about betrayals », says the singer-songwriter amidst the hilarity of the public and the embarrassment of Amadeus.

In the meantime the lights go out and the orchestra sings the first notes of the song by Gino Paoli that everyone knows, The sky in a room. When he wrote it she was so young that she didn’t even appear in the Siae lists. It was Mogol and Toang who protected the authorship until Paoli deposited it with the correct signature. In an instant, at the Ariston, the ceiling turns purple and then turns into the sky: «When you are next to me/ This purple ceiling/ No, it doesn’t exist anymore/ I see the sky above us».