Giorgia - singer-songwriter

Sanremo victory first of multiple successes

Giorgia has become one of Italy's
most popular performers

The popular singer-songwriter Giorgia Todrani, who performs simply as ‘Giorgia’, was born on this day in 1971 in the Monteverde Vecchio neighbourhood of Rome.

Giorgia, whose vocal ability has seen her compared to the American superstar singer Whitney Houston, rocketed to fame after winning the prestigious Sanremo Music Festival in 1995, less than a year into her recording career.

She has since sold more than 25 million records worldwide. Of her 12 studio albums, five have reached No 1 in the Italian charts, as did a greatest hits compilation released in 2002.  Giorgia has also topped the Italian singles chart on five occasions.

Her 1995 Sanremo winner, Come saprei - How would I know? - which she co-wrote with three others, including the best-selling Italian male star, Eros Ramazzotti, was the first entry to win both the main competition and the critics’ award at the annual festival.

Thirty years later, in 2025, she was strongly tipped to win Sanremo again with La cura per me - The cure for me - from her No 1 album G. Ultimately, the song finished sixth, a result that sparked boos from the audience at the Teatro Ariston, the theatre in the Ligurian resort that has been home to the competition since 1977.

Giorgia was born into a musical household in that her father, Giulio Todrani, was half of the singing duo Juli & Julie, which enjoyed some success in the 1970s and ‘80s. Giulio is said to have chosen the name, Giorgia, for his daughter after a favourite Ray Charles song, Georgia on My Mind. 

After the Juli & Julie duo - in which he partnered with the female singer Angela Bini - went their separate ways in 1989, Giulio formed a soul and rhythm-and-blues group under the name Gli Io Vorrei La Pelle Nera. Giorgia is said to have performed on stage with the group.

Giorgia had some formal singing lessons from the lyric tenor, Luigi Rumbo, who was a member of the Sistine Chapel choir, but it was at Roman jazz clubs such as the Alexanderplatz in Prati, Big Mama in Trastevere and La Palma in Pigneto that she honed her vocal style.

Since winning Sanremo in 1995, Giorgia's
record sales have topped 25 million

The Sanremo Music Festival would play a significant part in her professional breakthrough in the early 1990s.

In 1993, she entered and won Sanremo Giovani, a section of the competition for young artists, with a song called Nasceremo, the prize for which included entry for the Newcomers section in 1994. The bonus for Giorgia was that the 1993 edition of Sanremo Giovani was the first to be televised.

Although her 1994 song, E poi - And Then - finished only seventh in the Newcomers section, it gained enough attention to become a hit single, reaching number two in the Italian chart, matched by the album from which it came, entitled simply Giorgia, which made No 2 in the album chart, selling 180,000 copies in Italy.

That success sparked an invitation to appear with the opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti on one of his famous Pavarotti & Friends charity concerts in Modena as part of a celebrity line-up that included Sting, Bryan Adams and the rising tenor Andrea Bocelli, who had won the Newcomers section at Sanremo in which she had finished seventh.

Giorgia and Bocelli then appeared together at a Christmas Eve concert at the Vatican in front of Pope Paul II, their performance creating enough interest for them to release a single together, Vivo per lei, in 1995.

Of course, it was winning the main Sanremo contest in 1995 that provoked the biggest surge in Giorgia’s popularity. Her second album, Come Thelma & Louise, which included Come saprei, sold eight million copies worldwide and remains her biggest-selling individual album. No less a star than Elton John described her voice as “one of the most beautiful in the world” and invited her to appear as a guest on his upcoming tour of Italy.

A particularly proud moment for her father, Giulio, came in 2000 when Ray Charles, the iconic American soul singer, invited Giorgia to sing Georgia on My Mind at one of his concerts, having heard the story of how she came to be named.

Over time, through collaborations with artists such as Pino Daniele and Herbie Hancock, Giorgia was able to broaden her repertoire away from the ballads of her early success to more up-tempo and experimental music, allowing her to explore the full range of her vocal skills and bring comparisons with some of the most versatile singers in jazz-pop history.

Away from performing, Giorgia has been in a relationship since 2004 with Emanuel Lo, a dancer and teacher on the TV talent show, Amici di Maria De Filippi. The two met during one of the singer's tours and have a son, Samuel, who was born in 2010. 

A previous relationship ended in tragedy when the singer Alex Baroni, her partner of four years, was killed in a motorcycle accident.

She still lives in the Monteverde district of Rome, not far from where she grew up. 

The Villa Pamphilj, with its surrounding park,
is one of the attractions of the Monteverde district

Travel tip:

Monteverde, the area of Rome where Giorgia was born and still lives, can be found to the southwest of the central part of the city, within the Municipio XII rione. It borders Trastevere to the north and sits across the Tiber from Testaccio. Divided into the older Montevecchio Vecchio, characterised by elegant early‑20th‑century villas, and the mainly post-war Monteverde Nuovo, the area is historically middle‑class and artistic, with a long association with musicians, actors and media professionals. Small theatres and music venues abound. Known as a green area, it is home to the Villa Pamphilj, Rome’s largest landscaped park, popular for jogging, walking and relaxing, as well as the smaller park around Villa Sciarra. To the north, the Gianicolo - Janiculum Hill - offers panoramic city views.  The film director Pier Paolo Pasolini often chose the neighbourhood for location shots. Though quieter than neighbouring Trastevere, its restaurants are popular in the evenings and an increasing number of visitors chose to stay in the area, picking it as a quiet escape from the crowds in central Rome, yet close enough to be a base for exploring.

Monteverde hotels from Hotels.com

The Teatro Ariston in Sanremo, which has been
home to the Sanremo Music Festival since 1977

Travel tip:

The resort of Sanremo in Liguria, which has figured prominently in Giorgia’s career, can be found 146km (91 miles) southwest of Genoa as the Italian Riviera extends towards France. Sanremo enjoyed particular prestige even before the music festival, first staged in 1951, put it on the cultural map. The town expanded rapidly in the mid-18th century, when the phenomenon of tourism began to take hold among the wealthy. Several grand hotels were established and the Emperor Nicholas II of Russia was among the European royals who took holidays there. The Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, who bequeathed money in his will to establish the prizes that take his name, was so taken with the elegance of the town after his holiday visits that he made it his permanent home. Known as the City of Flowers, it is characterised by its Stile Liberty architecture (the Italian variant of Art Nouveau), of which the Casinò di Sanremo in Corso degli Inglesi is a beautiful example.  The Casino, in fact, was home to the music festival until 1977, when its closure for renovations obliged the organisers to find an alternative venue. They chose the Teatro Ariston, the town’s largest theatre in Via Matteotti, which is where it has remained.

Choose Expedia for accommodation in Sanremo

More reading:

How Mina became Italy’s all-time top-selling female music star

Laura Pausini, Sanremo winner and first Italian woman to land Grammy

The history of the Sanremo Music Festival

Also on this day:

1538: The birth of painter Gian Paolo Lomazzo

1575: The birth of Maria de’ Medici

1925: The birth of chocolatier Michele Ferrero

1977: The birth of astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti 

1993: The birth of rugby player Tommaso Allan

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