By Gaspare Trapani (CECC/FCH/UCP e FLUL/Ulisboa – Lisbon)

“I was born and raised in the Veneto region, which is not only white, but in my opinion was obscurantist at the time. My mother would have liked to continue her studies, but since she was a woman and the family had decided otherwise, she had to start working. I wanted to become the free voice of women who take the beauty and freedom that is their right”[1]. In an interview released in 2022, Rettore thus describes her origins and that desire for redemption which characterizes not only her personality, but also the various examples of her record production, the majority of which she authored along with her husband Claudio Rego.

Donatella Rettore was born on July 8, 1955 in Castelfranco Veneto: a gift for her parents—hence the name Donatella—after four other children died prematurely. She likely inherited her artistic streak from her mother, a Goldonian actress in Cesco Baseggio’s theater company, so much so that at just ten years old she started a small band for which she was the frontwoman. She sang songs by Nomadi, Caterina Caselli, and Patty Pravo. The band’s name couldn’t have been more prophetic: Cobra.

When Rettore was still Donatella.

At fourteen years of age we find her in Naples on a summer tour with maestro Roberto De Simone’s Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare and, after winning a competition for new vocal stars, she was the opening act for some of Lucio Dalla’s concerts. After graduating from high school, she decided to leave Veneto and try her luck in Rome.

However, she instead traveled to Naples again, where in October 1973 she recorded her debut 45 rpm with the Edibi label: “Quando tu” / “L’Amore e…” (“When you” / ”Love and…”). Rettore authored the lyrics for both songs, while Mario Pagano composed the music. While the single essentially went unnoticed, Donatella gained attention, and a few months later, in March 1974, Gianni Ravera included her in the twenty-fourth Sanremo Festival. There she sang another of her penned songs—“Capelli Sciolti” (“Loose Hair”)—and came in second to last in the competition. But Donatella actually preferred “Il tango della cantante” (“The Singer’s Tango”), the B-side of “Capelli Sciolti,” in which we find the essential motifs of tenacity and self-irony which would characterize the poetics of her future musical production.

In the song, which she performed with vigor and masterful stage presence, despite her tender age, she says, among other things:

Canto, piango
questo tango lo potete anche ballar
brava, bene!
la mia arte dove mai andrà a morir
e mentre piango e canto il tango disperata
arriva uno e mi dice di cambiar mestier!

(I sing, I cry
you can even dance this tango
bravo, good!
where will my art ever go to die
and while I cry and sing the tango in despair
someone comes and tells me to find another career!)

At the end of 1974, the above-mentioned songs became a part of her first album—Ogni giorno si cantano canzoni d’amore (Every Day We Sing Love Songs)—along with six additional tracks. The title is a bit misleading; it alludes not only to loves lost or won between a man and a woman, but to many other types of loves, often tormented, beseeched, unrequited or even absent. A prime example is the first track, “Maria Sole,” whose refrain inspired the long title of the LP. In the following verse, the artist sings “ogni giorno c’è un bimbo che nasce per errore” (“every day a child is born by mistake”). The song’s protagonist, Maria Sole, is a little girl brought into the world and then abandoned at a boarding school run by nuns. And in fact, the young artist herself lived in a boarding school run by nuns, sent there by her mother because of her extreme vivacity. The experience, which she often recalled in interviews, had a profound effect on her, so much so that it inspired these verses:

Ecco suona la campana
qui bene o male si va a dormire
e ancora il pianto di Giuliana
sotto il cuscino dovrò sentire
dice che lei l’hanno trovata
dentro un cestino in una via
e che per grazia del Signore
non è volata via

(Here the bell is ringing
here, for better or worse, we go to sleep
and once again under my pillow
I’ll have to listen to Giuliana crying
she says that they found her
in a trash can on a street
and by the grace of the Lord
she did not die)

The song hints rather openly at the theme of abortion, which would become legal in Italy only four years after the recording of the piece. Equally heartbreaking is “Stasera, ogni sera” (“Tonight, Every Night”) in which love (and bodies) are sold on a street corner:

Anche stasera
come ogni sera
son qui che attendo
qualcuno che mi cerchi
debbo chiedergli il nome
e dirgli: “Amore mio”
prendere i suoi quattrini
ed andarmene via

(And tonight
like every night
I’m here waiting
for someone to come looking for me
I have to ask him his name
and call him “my love”
take his money
and get away)

Nevertheless, the album went unnoticed due in part to poor distribution, despite Gino Paoli being one of the authors of “Ti ho preso con me” (“I took you with me”). There was probably no lost love between the two, considering that in a recent interview Rettore declared: “Gino Paoli turned his back every time he saw me” (Conti).

Her first successes were about to come outside Italy, mainly Switzerland and Germany, with the cover of a Spanish song for which Rettore wrote the Italian lyrics: “Lailolà.” A hymn to sexual liberation, the song would sell more than 500,000 copies and would take her to the Sanremo Festival in 1977 for a second time. There she sang “Carmela,” a song in which anti-fascism and pacifism merge against the backdrop of the Spanish civil war and the Franco dictatorship.

The piece would pave the way for what is perhaps the most “activist” of the albums by the Venetian artist—Donatella Rettore—in 1977, signaling the last time she would use both her first and last name. While on the one hand some songs continued to draw inspiration from her childhood (“Nel viale della scuola è sempre autunno” [“Down the School Alley it’s always Autumn”] and “Padre non piangere” [“Father don’t Cry”]), others reveal a political commitment to social justice which, in those years, was only recognized among singer-songwriters. The artist herself talks about it in her book Dadauffa – Memorie agitate: “The album Donatella Rettore earned me the nickname of “De Gregori in a skirt,” which unnerved me quite a bit. I found it offensive that I could only exist in relation to a man, almost as if songwriting were a male prerogative and a female derivative” (Rettore, p. 66). In the album, one senses this feminist bent starting with “La Berta,” a portrait of a young feminist struggling with a partner who “is not good at working” and a father who “is only good at drinking” and who seeks social justice and her emancipation within a book, “her capital”—a thinly veiled allusion to Marx. The same themes can be found in “Il Patriarca” (“The Patriarch”) while in “Caro Preside” (“Dear Principal”), the school is once again presented as the first institution where social differences between “the son of a doctor” and “the son of a bricklayer” emerge. “Gabriele” deserves a special mention, not only because it is here that the rock sounds which would become so prominent a few years later first began to emerge, but also because Rettore directly attacks the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio who, especially in those politically polarized years some, was believed to be a proto-fascist:

Profilo di grande uomo politico e internazionale
con i tuoi folli atteggiamenti da principe del male
avevi amanti pazze, disposte anche alla morte
con loro sì che ti sentivi simbolo del sesso forte
ma se ci fossi stata io…

(Profile of a great international politician
with your foolish attitude as a prince of evil
you had crazy lovers, some even willing to die
with them you felt like a symbol of the stronger sex
but if I had been there…)

After all, this was the end of the 70s, when the political clash between students and young people and on the right and left would reach its peak.

The First Female Singer-Songwriter in the Charts.

Rettore herself became a victim, attacked by right-wing groups while she was tearing down posters for the Movemento Sociale Italiano (MSI) from public walls. From this significant experience the song “Eroe” (“Hero,” 1978) was born. It was a turning point: the artist definitively put aside the name Donatella, turning towards pop-rock and beginning a journey with the Ariston record label that would lead her, in the early 1980s, to become—as Corriere della Sera would later note—the first Italian singer-songwriter in the charts.

We cannot fail to mention her husband, Claudio Rego, the singer’s true alter ego who would compose all of her music from 1977 until the present. Rettore would say: “We are not a couple like Mogol–Battisti. Together, we form a single singer-songwriter. It is an amalgam; you don’t know where one ends and the other begins” (Rettore, p. 58).

The next single, released in 1979, was titled “Splendido splendente” (“Shining Splendid”) and would soon make history. Regardless of the various possible interpretations—cosmetic surgery or gender fluidity—the theme is the body, and the possibility of changing one’s body as one wishes, as a means to happiness:

Come sono si vedrà:
uomo o donna senza età
senza sesso crescerà,
per la vita una splendente vanità

(How I look is yet to be seen
man or woman, ageless,
genderless, a resplendent vanity
will grow for life)

The success of the single was accompanied by that of the LP, Brivido Divino (1979), an album in which the singer-songwriter style (“Il mimo”) merges with rock and New Romantic (“La mia più bella canzone d’amore”) or dance music (“Brilla”). The lyrics are far more provocative and versatile, introducing various themes from the occult (“Salvami”) to the animalier (“L’aquila nera”) to that of stardom in verse (“Divino Divina”) in a sort of multifaceted narrative that would have its sequel in the subsequent 33 rpm.

The journey continued the following year with Magnifico Delirio. The single “Kobra” would become Rettore’s most iconic song, and we immediately realize that the subject of the title “is not a snake.”

Beyond the song’s obvious sexual allusions, it is worth highlighting the verse in which the kobra is defined as “a noble servant who lives in prison,” underscoring the fact that, as such, it must obey and submit: in this case to the narrator, the woman for whom it is “a frequent thought that becomes indecent.” Reading between the lines, therefore, the song represents a feminist text in which the woman claims the right to her own pleasure and control over sexual roles, ideas that were not particularly commonplace in those times (nor, if you think about it, are they today). The song’s success was sensational: it reached fourth place in Italy and Germany and also won the Festivalbar (together with Miguel Bosè).

But the album contained more than one sexual provocation. In “Benvenuto” (“Welcome”), Rettore sings:

Benvenuto così
come ho sempre sperato
benvenuto dentro e innamorato
benvenuto per sempre
sulla pancia e assetato
benvenuto in gola e nel palato

(Welcome as
I always hoped
welcome inside and in love
welcome forever
on the belly and thirsty
welcome in my throat and palate)

The video intended to be the theme song for Domenica In was censored (and replaced by the more reassuring “Mi mancherai” by Marcella, with whom Rettore had a less than peaceful relationship at the time).

“Gaio” (“Gay”) is definitely worth listening to: in addition to the title’s clear reference to homosexuality, the protagonist is a biologically male crossdresser who often uses accessories typically associated with people of the female gender, thus presenting himself as a woman.

In “Delirio” (“Delirium”), pop rock merges with opera, while “Magnifica” is a sort of Calvino-esque fairy tale set to music.

This second successful album seemed like the consecration of an artist who stood out from all the rest, not only because she sang her own lyrics, but also because she escaped from the cliché according to which female singers were expected only to sing love songs.

Further confirmation came in 1981 with the album Estasi clamorosa (Unbelievable Ecstasy) and the single “Donatella,” in which, half-seriously and half-jokingly, she emphasizes her firm desire to be called only Miss Rettore. Once more the song, in full ska style, would win the Festivalbar again, marking a first in Italy.

Among the album’s tracks, it is worth mentioning “Estasi,” initially conceived for Patty Pravo, and “Remember,” written by Elton John, with whom Rettore would begin a fruitful collaboration and friendship.

It was during a long stay in London that Rettore planned her next move: a concept album entitled Kamikaze rock’n’roll suicide, dedicated entirely to Japanese culture and the delicate theme of suicide (the body once again!). Through various episodes, the album tells the story of a soldier, and here Rettore presents herself as a man, something unprecedented in Italian pop music. The artist clarifies: “I am clearly a warrior, and in the album I speak in the masculine: the narrator is not feminine but masculine” (Meis, p. 187). The title track, “Kamikaze rock’n roll suicide,” expresses the excitement of someone who commits suicide to the rhythm of rock. In “Oblio” (“Oblivion”), it is the soul of the kamikaze that rises and continues to live without a body. “Sayonara” features the hero who fights, contemptuous of all danger and focused only on glory and victory. The other songs express various ways of interpreting suicide, such as “Garage,” which tells the story of the suicide of femininity; or “Karakiri,” which speaks of the samurai method of offering their life in the name of honor. “The story of this soldier is my story, that I am a kamikaze; but it is also the story of humanity” (Meis, p. 187). The top single of that year would be “Lamette” (“Blades”), another of her manifesto-songs, another provocation consumed by the public.

Rettore’s Creative Process.

Rettore was now confirmed as the best-selling singer of the period (Mustacchio, p. 171), clearly surpassing her main “rivals,” Bertè and Nannini first and foremost.

The secret of her success lay not only in the audacity and versatility of her lyrics or in her musical innovation but in the very conception of the artist’s creative process.

Rettore, in fact, does not limit herself to writing and performing her songs, but represents them with real visual events. As Crusca scholar Lorenzo Coveri states, “the song has more to do with an act of oral communication, with an act of theatrical communication” (Coveri, p. 15). Indeed, with Rettore, just as in the theater, the body becomes a fully synergic, expressive surface rather than an accessory to the voice with the concept of “total art.”

As in a Renaissance workshop—it is perhaps no coincidence that Rettore, like Giorgione, is from Castelfranco Veneto!—it is the artist herself, together with a small circle of collaborators, who take care of every small detail beyond the musical aspect: from the album covers to the clothing, from the make-up to the hair styles, from the choreography to the staging, each piece has its own specificity, without ever repeating itself, both in concerts and in television appearances.

Thus, for example, the performances of “Kobra” feature an “optical witch” version of Rettore in black and white, evoking the poisonous elapid, while the “Kamikaze” performances highlight a Japanese-inspired post-atomic look. These elaborate costumes and settings were unprecedented in Italy, something we would only see later with the likes of Madonna.

It is not surprising, therefore, that just a few months after dressing as a Japanese soldier, Rettore would appear on stage dressed all in white, surrounded by soft teddy bears and singing the poignant This Time, written for her once again by Elton John’s entourage. In 1982, the song would be featured in the soundtrack of a film called Cicciabomba, in which Rettore played the protagonist. It was a comedy in which the theme is what we today would call body shaming. It would not be Rettore’s only cinematic foray: in 1989 she had a cameo in Kinski Paganini by Klaus Kinsky.

At the height of Rettore’s success, Caterina Caselli, perhaps Italy’s most powerful record producer of the time (and beyond), urged her to join the CGD label, a choice that Rettore would soon come to regret, labelling it “a gross error of judgment.” It was with Caselli, who had returned to performing after nine years of silence, that she recorded the Christmas-themed “Little Drummer Boy” / “Peace on Earth,” which Bing Crosby and David Bowie had also performed as a duet in 1977. This duet did nothing to settle the differences between Rettore and Caselli; nevertheless, with CGD Rettore published another concept album, Far West (1983), with the single “Io ho te” (“I Have You”) set in the American West and, two years later, Danceteria in which a more sensual Rettore appears, in retro atmospheres and diva costumes.

The Roller Coaster

Feeling unsatisfied, Rettore broke her contract with Caselli and CGD and in 1986 she signed with another prestigious record company, Ricordi. However, they immediately suggested (demanded?) that she return to Sanremo. Due to family reasons—her mother was ill—Rettore preferred not to participate; even more so when, as a singer-songwriter, she was given a song that was not her own, “Amore stella” (“Love star”) by Morra-Fabrizio (who at the time were writing for Gianni Togni, Miguel Bosè and Riccardo Fogli, among others). She certainly could not stomach some of the lyrics, which she described as sappy and showing excessive sentimental dependence on men:

Io che sono niente nullità
chissà che dio diventerei
se in quel che vivi fossi anch’io
se quel che fai fosse un po’ mio
da te mi lascerei bruciare
e giù all’inferno e anche più giù
se proprio in fondo fossi tu

(I who am nothing, nothingness
who knows what kind of god I would become
if I were also there in what you live
if what you do was a little bit mine
I would let myself burn with you
down to hell and even further down
if you were right at the bottom)

She refused to hide her feelings in interviews, not even live on TG1 with Vincenzo Mollica, in which, moreover, she got into an arguement with Marcella. She therefore sang the song very reluctantly at a highly competitive women’s festival (Anna Oxa and Loredana Bertè would participate, among others). However, as someone who never shied from the limelight, she sang the sappy lyrics with a poignant and intense performance, deconstructing and exorcising it in its entirety while wearing a Cruella De Vil costume (not that of an angel, as many would assume). It was much appreciated by the Ariston audience: they threw her flowers at every performance and would make a fuss about that undeserved thirteenth place. The song would later become not only the theme but the leitmotif of the Sicilian-set film Più buio di mezzanotte presented at Cannes in 2014. Over the course of the last few years, Rettore made her peace with the song by reintroducing it into the setlist of her live shows.

Inevitably, however, the relationship with Ricordi would end abruptly. At this point the Venetian artist began what she herself has defined as a “roller coaster” in her career, jumping around from one record company to the next.

It was in this very complex moment that the musical encounter with Giuni Russo first took place, she too coming from a negative experience at Caterina Caselli’s CGD. This is how Rettore remembers it in her Dadauffa: “We had the reputation of being the unmanageable ones in the Italian music scene, an adjective often used for those who are free and coherent” (Rettore, p. 164). Thus, the single “Adrenalina” was born: in one of the very first pop duets between artists (very rare at the time), the two singers took over the stage for 4 minutes of total irreverence. The 80s, meanwhile, were coming to an end, and Rettore published the album Rettoressa (1988)—another play on words with her surname!—and a collection, Ossigenata (1989), with the unreleased “Zan zan zan” and “Sogno americano” (“American Dream”).

With the arrival of the 90s, times, tastes and, in a certain sense, the rules all changed. There was a return to more organic and acoustic sounds, and lyrics became more introspective with a renewed interest in classical songwriting and melodic-traditional Italian music. Even the sound aesthetic changed radically, with the glamorous image of the artists of the 80s replaced by a more restrained—if not downright chaste—style. One might think of the example of Renato Zero who, from songs like “Mi vendo” (1977) or “Triangolo” (1978) would go on to sing songs like “Ave Maria” (1993) accompanied by “conversions” on stage; or, in the female sphere, where Gianna Nannini’s provocative lyrics—“America” (1979)—were replaced by much more “reassuring” lyrics.

But Rettore had no desire to be reassuring, and considering that her musical provocations were in fact also cultural, she did not give in to new trends, nor, above all, to the diktats which the various labels would impose on her: it is no coincidence that at the beginning of the 90s, she decided to buy back the master of an album ready for release in order to keep it off the market.

After Son Rettore e canto (I am Rettore and I Sing, 1992) we would have to wait until 1994 to see her again on the big stage: with the poignant ballad “Di notte specialmente” (“Especially at Night”), Pippo Baudo wanted her at the forty-fourth Sanremo festival. There she would rank tenth and would also obtain a good bump in sales. The single was followed by the album Incantesimi notturni (Nocturnal Incantations). Two years later, during a live performance, she introduced the song “Fax,” in collaboration with Elio e le Storie Tese.

However, nine years would pass before she released a new album. Here is an excerpt from “Figurine,” the title track of the 2005 album:

In un mondo pieno di iene
quante belle statuine
siamo tutti figurine
tanto sonno sete e fame

(In a world full of hyenas
so many beautiful figurines
we are all figurines
so much sleepiness, thirst and hunger)

The album would essentially go unnoticed, but it presents us with a more intimate and, in a certain sense, disappointed and angry Rettore. The singer-songwriter makes this clear to us in one of her most self-reflective songs, written in the first person, with the emblematic title “Stralunata” (“Dazed”):

Stralunata come un angelo di strada
che non sa dove volare
annullata dentro un mondo senza vita
che non so dov’è finita
stralunata e senza meta
chi lo sa se l’ho mai avuta

(Dazed like a street angel
who doesn’t know where to fly
canceled out inside a lifeless world,
I don’t know where it ended up
dazed and aimless
who knows if I ever had it)

In 2011, instead, came the most recent album of unreleased songs: Caduta Massi (Rockslide). Here as well, as the title testifies, the falling rocks are a metaphor for the dangers to humanity, which we must avoid in order to survive. The lyrics, while continuing the reflective vein of the previous album, mark Rettore’s return to a decidedly rock sound with a newfound taste for paradox and often bitter irony.

Among the songs, “Se morirò” should certainly have deserved greater popularity: it not only challenges mortality with the hypothetical “if,” but it exorcises and perceives death as a condition which allows it to be eternally whole:

Se morirò
morirò con l’orchestra
serà un cambio di giostra
avrò tre soldi in tasca
se morirò
morirò con il trucco
ci sarà il mare in ragrasca
e avrò tre soldi in tasca

(If I die
I’ll die with the orchestra
it will be a change of carousel
I’ll have three cents in my pocket
if I die
I’ll die with makeup on
there will be a stormy sea
and I’ll have three cents in my pocket)

Unfortunately, Caduta Massi would be Rettore’s last album of new songs, but she never abandoned her TV appearances (her participation as a coach on Ora o mai più [It’s Now or Never] was unforgettable), nor the live concerts that are always very popular, all over the Italian peninsula.

Chiamarla Dottoressa!

The 2020s marked a further reversal of musical taste, leading to a rebirth of pop in Italy. With the help of Amadeus at Sanremo, pop returned to the forefront with figures such as Achille Lauro, Elodie, la Rappresentante di Lista, Mahmood, Madame, Colapesce & Di Martino, and Annalisa.

Rettore was a point of reference for many of these artists. It is no coincidence that in 2021, on the evening of duets, she would be a guest of La Rappresentante di Lista where they performed a magnificent revival of “Splendido Splendente” in which the voices of Veronica Lucchesi and Rettore blend harmoniously.

This participation would be the prelude to another appearance, this time in the 2022 competition, with Ditonellapiaga and the single “Chimica,” which immediately went platinum. It was perfectly in line with Rettore’s electro-pop production, in which provocation reigns supreme once again, with lyrics that privilege the exaltation of physical love (the body!), to the detriment of sentimental love of the heart, without inhibitions or taboos:

E non c’è anticipo o ritardo
se rimango vengo ripetutamente
e non m’importa del pudore
delle suore me ne sbatto totalmente
e non mi fare la morale
che alla fine, se Dio vuole è solamente
una questione di chimica, chimica.

(And there is no advance or delay
if I stay I come repeatedly
and I don’t care about the modesty
of the nuns I don’t give a damn
and don’t preach to me
that in the end, God willing, it’s only
a question of chemistry, chemistry.)

These two precious collaborations would be followed by other, true multi-generational meetings in the name of pop. Thus were born “Faccio da me” (“I do it myself”, 2022) with Tancredi, and “Spettacolare” (“Spectacular”), written by Stato Sociale, with the indie duo Legno (2023). 2024 is the year that “Lamette” was presented at Sanremo on duet night with the young musicians of La Sad, and in concert with the Ligurian singer-songwriter Annalisa.

The single “Il senso del pericolo” (“Sense of Danger”) has recently been released as a prelude to an announced album of unreleased songs for which fans have been waiting for thirteen long years.

Rettore’s career as a singer-songwriter has lasted more than fifty years. It must be said that her role as a true singer-songwriter has never been fully recognized. Much like in literary anthologies, where male writers overshadow female writers, it was difficult for her to gain her space: “I had to hear phrases like ‘Males are more suited to this genre’ or ‘Maybe one day it will happen, but women are not yet ready to play this role’” (Rettore, p. 60).

But it was not the only prejudice against her: the production of catchy hits—too hastily defined as jingles or mindless pop—and the performances in which no detail (clothing, makeup, hairstyle, choreography, scenography) was overlooked, ensured a lack of attention on the richness of her lyrics, often hidden between nonsense phrases and cutting irony, one of the main secrets of Rettore’s poetics and creative process.

If throughout her career, Rettore’s qualities have been acknowledged by a large and loyal group of admirers, and in recent years these same qualities have been recognized both by her own colleagues and much younger audiences, as well as by critics and music scholars who have highlighted her role as a pioneer.

It is in this context that, in April 2023, an honorary degree in Management of Artistic and Cultural Resources was bestowed on her by the IULM University of Milan.

An excerpt from award speech reads, among other things: “An eclectic and irreverent personality, Donatella Rettore, like an entire generation of singer-songwriters who have written important pages in the history of Italian pop music, in particular has given life to a real laboratory of invisible but industrious and virtuous textual research, which manages to weave, in an almost subliminal but empathically sensitive way, a musical fabric where words and notes merge, drawing—like in an age-old Persian carpet—fairy-tale arabesques visible only to the privileged who manage to penetrate, as if by magic, the texture of those imaginary tapestries.” This mark of recognition—awarded for the first time to a woman and previously bestowed upon artists of the caliber of  Lucio Dalla, Vasco Rossi and Roberto Vecchioni—does only partial justice for the overly hasty judgment that considered her a whimsical character in our musical panorama, author of ready-made songs accompanied by performances often considered frivolous and over the top. In short, to quote the title of a piece by Rettore: “Presto, che è tardi!” (“Hurry up: it’s late!”).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Conti, Andrea “Donatella Rettore: ‘Antonello Venditti contro Annalisa e Angelina? Ce l’aveva pure con me, fanno bene a sperimentare. È vero che volevo scappare da Sanremo 86 perché è stato terribile, papà stava male’“, Fatto Quotidiano Magazine 29/06/2024.

Coveri, Lorenzo (a cura di). Parole in musica. Lingua e poesia nella canzone d’autore italiana, , Novara, Interlinea, 1996.

Longo, Emiliano. Rettore specialmente, Arcana, 2018.

Meis, Gianluca. #Rettore Magnifico Delirio, VoloLibero Edizioni, 2014. 

Mustacchio, Andrea. Donne in hit parade, 2023
Rettore, Donatella. Dadauffa. Memorie agitate , Rizzoli, 2022.

Scorranese, Roberta. “Rettore: ‘Io trasgressiva? La prima volta fu con mio marito, 44 anni fa. Morandi? Se non sa usare i social, si ritiri’”, Corriere della Sera, 05/01/2022.

Trapani, Gaspare. “Il Kobra (non) è un serpente: corpo e (de)sessualizzazione nella musica italiana al femminile ai tempi del Cavaliere” in Polifonia musicale: le vie delle melodie italiane in un mondo transculturale, Franco Cesati Editore, 2020, pp. 95-104

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[1] Roberta Scorranese, Rettore: “Io trasgressiva? La prima volta fu con mio marito, 44 anni fa. Morandi? Se non sa usare i social, si ritiri”, Corriere della Sera, 05/01/2022.