(Milan, 1934 – )
By Elisabetta Maino (University of de Lisbon)
Today, talking about Ornella Vanoni (Milan, 1934) means retracing the last eighty years of Italian history. Vanoni is one of those performers whose songs, like it or not, live in our heads, flow through our veins… Ornella is an impeccable artist, as well as a resolute, attentive, sharp and very lucid woman.[1]
Un filo di trucco, un filo di tacco[2] (A touch of makeup, a Touch of Heel) is the theatrical show which Vanoni herself brought to the most important stages in Italy as well as Switzerland. The journey began in 2014, at the dawn of her 80th birthday, and continued into 2015, almost two years of performances in which Ornella talked to us about life and love, retracing her life as a woman and an artist.
I thought of this tour and wrote it myself, it will move you and make you smile, I will be in it, all of me. [3]
Let’s take a step back to the 1950s, when it all began. In 1956, Ornella Vanoni joined the theater company of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, and it was here that she achieved her first successes as an actress and performer of the Songs of the Mala (Lowlife), the Milanese underworld. The songs were written by Giorgio Strehler, Vanoni’s partner who was madly in love with her, and by other artists such as Gino Negri and Dario Fo. Between theater and music, the choice was simple.
I became an actress after Strehler, thanks to my first husband, Lucio Ardenzi, a great impresario. Poor thing, I never loved him, but with him I did “The Idiot” by Achard. I was a great success. But then I chose music, it made me happier. [4]
And so, in the 1960s and 1970s, she joined a group of Milanese singers and songwriters – Enzo Jannacci, Sergio Endrigo, I Gufi, Giorgio Gaber, to name a few – who shared a common desire to lay bare reality, to talk about life, whether good or bad. Thus, in 1981, “Vai, Valentina” (“Go, Valentina”) was born, a song composed by Ornella Vanoni describing a dialogue between two women, in which the more mature one uses her experience to teach the younger one how to face life and love.
Ornella Vanoni made some interesting linguistic choices in her lyrics. In particular, she shows great precision in her selection of verbs.
Listening to “Vai, Valentina”, we can almost see the two women materialize before us, sitting at a table in some coffee place in the center of Milan. [5]
It is a song that reminds us of the experience of changing love: because human beings change, time passes, everything evolves and nothing remains still.
In the song we follow the path of Valentina, described in the first verse as a romantic and innocent girl, always ready to dance and fall in love:
Oh, Valentina
gambe lunghe per ballare
oh, Valentina
e ogni ballo un grande amore
(Oh, Valentina
long legs for dancing
oh, Valentina
and every dance is a great love)
In the second verse, Valentina grows, becomes more mature, almost unrecognizable in the eyes of the narrator:
ora dice che lavora
che ci ha messo una croce su
no, Valentina
non ti riconosco più
(now she says she is working,
has crossed it all off her list
no, Valentina
I don’t recognize you anymore)
The two choruses following the first two verses underscore the young woman’s impulsive and passionate character. Valentina is encouraged to escape from reality by abandoning herself to dreams and desires. To do this she must run, like a cat, like the wind, even like a thief, but a thief “who has stolen a book of poems.”
In the third and final verse, Valentina sinks into the hot tears which her loves have become. She is no longer able to feel love, she is trapped between desire and love. And here, once again, in the final chorus, she is encouraged to run, not to let herself go:
E allora corri come una gazzella
che non vuol finire dentro i trofei
…
e allora corri, corri come il vento
…
E allora corri, corri come un sogno
…
e allora corri, corri come corre il tempo
…
Corri, corri come corre il lampo
che se la pelle te la strappa una spina
ahi, Valentina, non è il dramma che pensi tu
era un “ti amo” e dopo non ti amo più
(So run like a gazelle
that doesn’t want to end up as a trophy
…
and then run, run like the wind
…
And then run, run like a dream
…
and then run, run like time runs
…
Run, run like lightning runs
and if your skin is torn by a thorn
oh, Valentina, it’s not as dramatic as you think
it was an “I love you”
and then an “I don’t love you anymore”)
The focus on female figures returns in her works from the 1990s. With the 1995 album Sheherazade, Vanoni embarks on “a sentimental journey into the world of women,”[6] penning eight of the twelve female portraits contained in it. The choice of the title is an intelligent and subtle homage to the resourcefulness, creativity, beauty, seduction, and genius of being a woman. In a note on the album, Vanoni defines Sheherazade, the protagonist of A Thousand and One Nights, as “the female archetype.” The beautiful, cultured, intelligent and cunning daughter of the vizier manages to conquer the evil sovereign who hates women so much he wants to kill them, but not before having possessed them. She does so by telling stories that follow one another in a continuous and endless plot.
Returning to the 1970s, we find another of the many faces of this multifaceted artist, the “Brazilian” Vanoni, the performer who lent her voice to songs by great authors such as Vinicius de Moraes, Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, and Roberto Carlos, to name a few.
But it is not simply a question of her voice. It’s about performance, about putting a text into the hands and voice of an intelligent, witty, kind, open woman, in life and on stage. A woman who is musical even when she speaks.
Ornella Vanoni’s performance goes beyond language. Entrusting her with a text means allowing her to “feel” it, as Gino Paoli did the first time they met, in the hallways of the Ricordi music studio in Milan.
It’s the spring of 1960 when I meet another woman. I have already published “La gatta” and “Il cielo in una stanza.” I am at home, at Ricordi. I am in the little room, at the piano, when Nanni enters with a beautiful red-haired girl.
“They tell me you are good. Would you write me a song?”
I don’t answer at all, I just stare at her.
…
“I don’t know,” I respond. Then I add: “And you, would you come to the Fair with me?”
She smiles, shyly. Then she leaves, goes into Nanni Ricordi’s office. Half an hour later she comes back.
“Look, I wrote the song for you,” I tell her.
And while she sits down next to me all serious, I play the waltz from “Senza fine” on the piano. D major, B minor seventh, G major, A major. When the passage to C minor seventh arrives with the spiral of melancholic chords that follows, I see a smile flash across her face.[7]
Ornella is attentive, listens, performs, interprets, represents. Always. When she performs, she translates mentally like a true translator, curious, humble and gentle.
Bruno Lauzi and Sergio Bardotti were the translators of the “Brazilian” Vanoni’s lyrics. With patience and humility, remaining in the shadows, they put themselves at the service of the lyrics, listening to them, feeling them. First they “betrayed” the text, moving away from it, then they slowly came back to it, curious, and finally they created a new style, which in its novelty remained faithful to the spirit of the original text, to its rhythm, to its tone, to the poetic feeling contained within it.
The translator’s task must be understood as a task in itself, clearly distinct from that of the poet. The translator’s task is to find that intention with respect to the target language where the echo of the original is reawakened.[8]
Among the most famous Brazilian songs performed by Ornella Vanoni, we cannot fail to mention “Sentado à beira do caminho” (Erasmo Carlos and Roberto Carlos, 1969), translated by Bruno Lauzi in 1970, with the title “L’appuntamento” (“The Date”).
The song tells of a woman’s long and futile wait after accepting yet another date, after having already made so many mistakes in her love life (“Ho sbagliato tante volte ormai/che lo so già” [“I’ve made so many mistakes by now/that I already know”]).
In the chorus, the wait builds anxiously, denouncing the woman’s lack of resistance—and therefore of existence:
amore fai presto, io non resisto
se tu non arrivi non esisto
non esisto, non esisto.
(Love, hurry up, I can’t resist
if you don’t get here I don’t exist
I don’t exist, I don’t exist)
Another equally famous song, “La voglia, la pazzia” (“Desire, Madness”) gives its name to the homonymous studio album recorded in 1976, in which Ornella Vanoni, Vinicius de Moraes and Toquinho sing a collection of songs in Italian by the greatest masters of Bossa Nova. “Se ela quisesse,” as the original song title goes, was written in 1975 by Vinicius and Toquinho as a samba, representing a kind of hymn to falling in love. Words and melody blend together in what could be defined as a musical poem: emotions grow, we are overcome by the carnival atmosphere that surrounds us, we feel an increase in
la voglia, la pazzia,
l’incoscienza, l’allegria,
di morir d’amore insieme a te
(the desire, the madness,
the recklessness and the joy
of dying of love together with you)
Ornella Vanoni performed many Brazilian songs along the long road which the artist has traveled. From her debut to today, she has produced more than sixty albums. In September 2013, Vanoni released Meticci (io mi fermo qui) (Mestizos (I’ll Stop Here)), presenting it as her final work, an album whichfeatures great collaborations with names such as Nada (“Il bambino sperduto” [“The Lost Child”]) and Franco Battiato (“Aurora” [“Dawn”]). Vanoni, now approaching her eightieth year, explains the subtitle of the album herself with a bit of melancholy:
It’s a huge effort, making records. It takes time and ideas; we worked on this project for at least a year and a half. I never wanted to go to the studio, and it saddened me to think that records no longer sell. I wonder what all this effort was for. [9]
It’s true that the effort is huge, but the desire to sing is even greater, and Vanoni didn’t stop there. In 2023 she offered us a new album, Calma Rivoluzione – Live 2023 (Calm Revolution – Live 2023): a collection of songs – three of which were recorded in the studio – taken from the show Le donne e la musica (Women and Music), written by the artist herself with Federica Di Rosa, and featuring an all-female band.
To conclude this biographical medley, let’s consider an episode dating back to May 1, 2022, the day on which Ornella Vanoni, the queen of Italian music, first took part in a concert organized every year in Rome’s Piazza San Giovanni on the occasion of Italy’s Labor Day. Leaving nothing to chance, the singer chose to perform a song written by Chico Buarque in 1971, “Construção” (“Costruzione” / “Construction”).
Vanoni had already performed the song in 1975, within the program Fatti e fattacci (Deeds and Misdeeds)by Antonello Falqui, where she appeared almost immobile on stage, dressed in dark clothes, with a backdrop representing the city of Rio de Janeiro behind her (but it could haave been any city, like Umberto Boccioni’s Città che sale). Her voice was monotonous, her legs barely moving in what seemed like a slow march in which her feet never left the floor and her head bobbed slightly from one side to the other.
“Construção” chronicles the final moments of a construction worker who climbs the scaffolding, repeating the mechanical and alienating gestures that will lead him to stumble into the sky like a drunk (or an old magician), floating in the air like a sparrow, then landing on the ground like a limp package and dying in the middle of the road, creating a traffic jam (on Saturday, as noted in the last verse).
Ornella is sensitive, an activist and, at the age of 87, on the big stage with all the labor unions present, she blends sounds, words and images to meticulously stick her finger into a wound that never stops bleeding: that of accidental deaths. Thus she lends her magnificent voice to those who, from one moment to the next, have sunk into eternal silence as if nothing has happened.
Just a week earlier, on April 24, 2022, the Tenco Club, as part of the event “Per te, Ornella – Serata di parole e musica,” (“For you, Ornella: An Evening of Words and Music”) organized at the Casino Municipale di Sanremo, awarded her the Tenco Special Award with the following words of praise:
An extraordinary example of a performer and singer-songwriter who is always intelligent and at the peak of artistic quality; from the start she has often provided unpublished musical suggestions and has continued to do so throughout her career. With an unmistakable style that favors emotion, she has introduced us to songs from the underbelly of society, the compositions of Genoese and Milanese singer-songwriters, and great Brazilian poetic songs, while also discovering new competitive talents among upcoming young Italian artists.”[10]
NOTES:
[1] BAGLIO, Gaspare. “Ornella Vanoni: in Italia il rock non existe,” in Rolling Stone Italia 29/09/2018
[2] “Quando ero ragazza e dovevo uscire, mia madre non smetteva di ripetermi, sino allo sfinimento, ‘Ricordati sempre: un filo di trucco, un filo di tacco’. Una raccomandazione che mi è rimasta impressa nella mente sino ad oggi. Povera mamma: certe volte esco in tuta. Tutta spettinata. Sento che me lo dice anche oggi che non c’è più”, in “Un filo di trucco e un tacco… l’ultimo tour” in TV Numeri Uno, 27 Febbraio 2014.
[3] Ibidem
[4] CHIAPPORI, Sara – “Strehler e Ornella Vanoni: ‘Io, il genio e l’amore ma sognavo l’allegria’” – in La Repubblica, 03/06/2021
[5] PERICOLI, Ugo – “Ornella Vanoni e ‘Vai, Valentina’: di corsa verso la modernità,” in Onda Musicale, 22/09/2023.
[6] COLOMBATI, Leonardo – Ornella Vanoni, in La canzone italiana 1861-2011. Storie e testi. – Milano, 2011, p.868
[7] PAOLI, Gino con BRESCIANI, Daniele. Cosa farò da grande – I miei primi 90 anni – Milano, 2023, p.92
[8] Benjamin, Walter. “Il compito del traduttore” (1920) in aut aut, 334, 2007, pp. 7-20.
[9] in https://www.rockol.it/recensioni-musicali/album/v-8386/ornella-vanoni-meticci
[10] PERICOLI, Ugo – cit.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BAGLIO, Gaspare. Ornella Vanoni: “in Italia il rock non esiste,” in Rolling Stone, 29 settembre 2018;
BENJAMIN, Walter. “Il compito del traduttore” (1920), in aut aut 334, 2007, pp. 7-20;
CAVALCANTI, Paulo. “Construção”, in Rolling Stone Brasil (2009);
PAOLI, Gino. Cosa farò da grande (2023);
RICOUER, Paul. Sur la traduction (2024).
