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“If you want to understand the country there is little to do, you have to look at Sanremo.” (Domenico De Masi) Beloved, hated, criticized, expected, followed or snubbed, the Sanremo Festival has always been the fixed and essential appointment with the Italian song. Artists, experts, enthusiasts or just curious people disembark from all over the world in the splendid Ligurian land for a week of music and entertainment. A contest between Italian songs, a show of fairytale clothes, a lounge for national and international guests, a stage from which to launch new fashions, a place where scandal, gossip and revolutions are at home. The Sanremo Festival is all this and much more, as in the best tradition of Italian excellence, in which every world always contains countless others to discover.
The Festival of the Italian Song of Sanremo was born from an idea by Angelo Nicola Amato, director of events and public relations of the Casino of Sanremo and Angelo Nizza, radio host. Pier Bussetti and Giulio Razzi developed the rules of the competition which first came about as a radio event and then landed on the small screen. The first edition of the Festival was held in Sanremo, the city of flowers, in 1951, in the Teatro del Casinò. The audience was sitting around old café chantant tables, among which they ate and listened. There were few present, suspicious of this novelty that they still struggled to accept. In 1953 via the tables: you could only enter by invitation, actually received, or purchased from touts to around 10,000 lire (130 euros today). The turning point came in 1955, with the first live television broadcast: a short Rai connection, in the late evening, was enough to activate the necessary media circuit, made up of comments from public opinion and songs whistled around the cities.
The history of the Sanremo Festival
Year after year, songs began to follow, which left their mark on the history of Italian music. A watershed date in this sense is that of 1958, when from the stage of the Sanremo Festival spread throughout the country and even beyond the tune of the Italian Song par excellence: “Nel blu dipinto di blu” by Domenico Modugno, better known as “Volare” , from the famous refrain. A liberating song with open arms, an optimistic text, an energetic melody. Meanwhile, the Sanremo Festival had become a veritable television event, broadcast on Eurovision by Raiuno.
From classical notes to modern rock: rock bursts onto the descent with young Italian singers, who slowly supplant the old glories. It is the 60s, the world is changing and the music of the Bel Paese is also changing: a brilliant and wild boy, Adriano Celentano, arrives; a girl with a melodious voice and big hair, Mina; a young man with an intellectual air and intense lyrics, Lucio Dalla. In 1967 a discordant note, a bitter memory, a wound still open in the hearts of Italian music lovers: Luigi Tenco shows up in Sanremo with his Ciao amore, ciao. He will be eliminated and react by taking his own life.
Italy enters the Years of Lead and there is no time and no way to think about music. For the entire duration of the 1970s the Sanremo Festival remains a marginal show, an entertainment show that wanted to lift Italians from sad thoughts for at least a few moments. In 1977 the Sanremo Festival moves to the Ariston Theater. In the new scenario, important international guests begin to circulate. Since then, every year on the Sanremo stage, famous names from the world of music, cinema and entertainment alternate, to further enrich what has become a real show.
Pippo Baudo, current champion presenter with his 13 conductions, ferries the Sanremo Festival through the Eighties and the Nineties. Mike Buongiorno, another famous name of the Italian television, alternates with him. On the stage, next to the conductors, from time to time beautiful little valleys and comedians rise, ready to make fun of the political and social world of the Peninsula. In many editions rather than the songs, it was the scandals that were the protagonists: who does not remember the vertiginous split with the “butterfly” tattoo in view of Belen Rodriguez or the man who threatened to jump off the theater gallery?
Pippo Baudo con Albano and Romina
Also this year the appointment with the Italian kermesse of Sanremo, in Liguria, is back. A real media event broadcast on Eurovision on Rai Uno starting around 20.45. When will Sanremo 2019 go on air? The Sanremo festival will take place from Tuesday 5 February to Saturday 9 February 2019, at the Ariston theater in Sanremo. Also this year the chosen artistic director is Claudio Baglioni, who will present accompanied by Claudio Bisio and Virginia Raffaele
The conductors of the 2019 Sanremo Festival
The 24 singers in the race, the Sanremo 2019 big names are Arisa, Loredana Bertè, BoomDaBash, Federica Carta and Shade, Simone Cristicchi, Nino D’Angelo and Livio Cori, Ex-Otago, Ghemon, Il Volo, Irama, Achille Lauro, Motta , Nek, Enrico Nigiotti, Negrita, Patty Pravo and Briga, Francesco Renga, Daniele Silvestri, Anna Tatangelo, Paola Turci, Ultimo and Zen Circus, with the addition of Mahmood and Einar, who won Sanremo Giovani 2018.
According to the latest Sanremo news, the guests of this 2019 edition will be Andrea Bocelli and his son Matteo, Serena Rossi, Michelle Hunziker, Pierfrancesco Favino, Pippo Baudo, Fabio Rovazzi, Luciano Ligabue, Alessandra Amoroso, Giorgia, Elisa, Antonello Venditti, Marco Mengoni, Eros Ramazzotti, Luis Fonsi, Claudio Santamaria, Michele Riondino, Laura Chiatti, Pio and Amedeo, Simona Ventura, Fiorella Mannoia and Riccardo Cocciante. But the surprises in Sanremo are around the corner.
As every year, the toto of Sanremo winners starts just before the Italian Song Festival. The regulation provides for four different voting systems, namely: televoting, the jury of the press room, the opinion poll jury (made up of a sample of 300 people passionate about music) and the expert jury. At the top of the list of possible winners are the names of Ultimo and Irama, beloved by the younger ones. Achille Lauro could be the unexpected surprise, but eyes focused on Francesco Renga and Il Volo, artists with typically Italian sounds.
Ultimo
So, on the curtain of this 69th edition of the Italian Song Festival. On the Sanremo stage, the greatest tricolor music artists, Italian excellence in the world, have passed and continue to pass. Because, whatever one may say, beyond any controversy and gossip, the Sanremo Festival is an event that brings together all the Italians in front of the TV. Because it is the mirror of Italian society and evolves with it. Or, more simply, “because Sanremo is Sanremo”.
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