Veteran entertainer has sold 50 million records
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| Gianni Morandi has been in the music business for 55 years |
The singer Gianni Morandi, a Sanremo Festival winner and
Eurovision Song Contest contestant who has sold more than 50 million records
and had a simultaneous career as a successful TV and film actor, was born on
this day in 1944 in a mountain village in Emilia-Romagna.
Morandi, whose longevity has brought comparisons with the
British singer Sir Cliff Richard, is still performing today at the age of 73.
In fact, he had an unlikely hit this year when he teamed up with 23-year-old
rapper and web star Fabio Rovazzi.
Morandi, whose pop-ballad style still has a big following, showed his versatility and
willingness to indulge in self-mocking humour this year by co-starring with Rovazzi in an
electro-pop track and video called Volare that went to No 1 on iTunes Italy and
attracted 2.5 million views in less than 24 hours.
He has also appeared in his 11th TV drama series,
having a few months earlier seen the release of his 18th movie.
His birthday is being marked today with a late-evening
special on Italy’s Canale 5 television station called Amore d’Autore, which
celebrates the public and private life of one of Italy’s best-loved
entertainers.
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| Morandi on stage in 2016: He still performs regularly |
Morandi was born in Monghidoro, now a village of almost
4,000 people that sits on a ridge in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines some 840m
(2,750ft) above sea level, about 41km (25 miles) south of Bologna.
As a young man he sold drinks and confectionery at his local
cinema and worked as an assistant in the workshop of his father, Renato, a
cobbler. Renato was an active member of
the Italian Communist Party and Morandi recalls that part of his daily routine was
to read aloud passages from Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and reports from the party
newspaper L’Unità.
But they were also a family who sang to entertain themselves
and it was when his father arranged for him to sing at family festivals
sponsored by L’Unità that Morandi enjoyed his first commercial success, collecting
a princely 1,000 lire as his appearance fee.
In 1958, his rendition of Domenico Modugno’s Sanremo winner
Nel blu dipinto di blu – more commonly known as Volare – earned him a place at
a singing school in Bologna and after winning good reviews at a number of
festivals he released his first single in 1962, with backing from Ennio
Morricone’s orchestra.
With a recording contract from RCA, he had a juke-box hit and
his first chart success later in the same year before releasing his first album
in 1963.
Throughout the 60s, he was a star of the Italian pop scene.
His 1964 single In ginocchio da te (Kneeling before you) was at the top of the
Italian singles charts for 17 weeks, selling more than one million copies, and
was followed by several more number one successes.
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| Morandi performing at the Eurovision Song Contest in Amsterdam in 1970 |
He courted controversy while at the early peak of his fame
by recording a protest song against the Vietnam War which the television
networks refused to promote yet which still reached number one in the chart.
Ironically, his career was then interrupted by compulsory
national service.
When he returned to civilian life, he was chosen to
participate for Italy in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest in Amsterdam, in
which he finished eighth behind the young Irish singer Dana’s entry All Kinds
of Everything, but thereafter his career went into a decline.
He enjoyed a revival in the 1980s, started by his success as
an actor in TV dramas, and by 1987, when he won the Sanremo Festival with Si può
dare di più, he was again popular and an album recorded with his friend, the
singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla, was very well received.
Since then, Morandi has become something of an icon in the
entertainment world in Italy. His concert tours, often marathon affairs lasting
more than a year and packing in hundreds of dates, would sell out months in
advance, and he has fronted many TV shows.
In 2013, his two Gianni Morandi – Live concerts at the Arena
di Verona were broadcast live on Canale 5 with an average audience of 6
million. Cher and Ennio Morricone were
among the artists who made guest appearances.
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| Morandi (right) in one of his earliest TV dramas, in 1966 |
Morandi has been married twice – for the first time, from
1966 to 1979, to Laura Efrikian, the daughter of an Armenian conductor, with
whom he had three children: Serena (1967), who sadly died after only a few hours,
Marianna (1969) and Marco (1974). He has five grandchildren.
In November, 2004 he married Anna Dan, his partner of 10
years and the mother of his son, Pietro, and the couple moved into a renovated
house in the regional park of Gessi Bolognesi and Calanchi dell'Abbadessa.
Morandi owes his enduring physical fitness to a passion for
marathon running. He has raced in 10 marathons, including New York (twice),
Berlin, London, Paris, Milan and Bologna.
Away from the entertainment business, he is a lifelong fan
of Bologna Football Club, which he helped saved from bankruptcy in 2010 before
being appointed honorary president later in the same year, a position he held
until the club was sold to an American consortium in 2014.
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| The Chiostro della Cisterna in Monghidoro |
Travel tip:
Occupying a ridge between two river valleys, Monghidoro has
historically been a place of strategic importance going back to the time of the
Ostrogoths and Lombards in the eighth and ninth centuries and remained so in the Second World War, when it was liberated from the Germans by Allied forces
in October 1944. Because of the challenging nature of nearby terrain, it was also
a stopping-off place for travellers seeking a passage between the Po Valley and
central Italy. Notable sights include the Chiostro della Cisterna, an elegant
cloister in the centre of the village that is all that remains of a 16th
century Olivetan monastery. The cultural heart of the village, in the summer it
hosts concerts, plays and exhibitions.
The elegant Piazza Armaciotto De Ramazzotti has a romantic atmosphere created
by lanterns, which take the place of street lights.
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| Typical scenery in the Gessi Bolognesi and Calanchi dell'Abbadessa regional park near Bologna |
Travel tip:
The Gessi Bolognesi and Calanchi dell'Abbadessa regional
park, situated just outside the city of Bologna to the southeast, is an area of striking natural beauty characterised by a series of gypsum outcrops creating
a landscape of cliffs, caves, rocky hillsides, enclosed basins, chalky ridges
and hidden valleys interspersed with rich greenery. The area has been subjected to intensive
mining over the centuries but all activity ceased in the 1970s and the area is
now popular with walkers and caving enthusiasts.
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