She had become the favorite guest of many TV programs, one above all “Che tempo che fa”, but many contested Ornella Vanoni because her age was only a personal reference which, indeed, had cleared her Milanese reserve, becoming a pass for ironic utterances and unconditional judgments.
She joked with a crown of flowers in her last appearance at Fabio Fazio’s, last November 2nd, with an uncommon lightness in the face of events which, however inevitable, terrify, supported by a clear but cheerful awareness. Her guests thus brought something sparkling because you never knew what she might say, not because she was airheaded, but just because she was free from conventions. Moreover, the life of Ornella Vanoni, which could well be summarized in “The desire, the madness, the unconsciousness, the cheerfulness”, the title of one of her albums, is testimony to freedom, to her never having been a prisoner of conventions and to having always acted with full and different autonomy compared to the girls of her time.
Loves with complicated – Strehler – and troubled men, – Gino Paoli – bonds that had nevertheless contributed to her artistic and cultural maturation, and to her transformation from a “mob singer” for the repertoire with which she made herself known, to a sophisticated interpreter of some of the most iconic songs of our musical panorama, which have consecrated her to greatness and now to immortality.
Great and curious, Ornella was also so in her generosity, both in challenging herself with different repertoires, such as in jazz or with the Brazilian sounds of Toquinho and Vinicius de Moraes, and in collaborations with younger colleagues with whom she often duetted, from Alberto Urso to Colapesce and Di Martino, up to what she defined as “a meeting of souls” with Mahmood in “Santa Allegria”, in an artistic bond that had become a sincere affection.
And then the style, a natural elegance that age had not affected and which led her to wear clothes of refined whimsy. Dressed by the greatest Italian designers, from Versace to Armani, even in fashion, she interpreted, if not almost anticipated, contemporaneity.