Marco Mengoni - singer-songwriter

X-Factor victory was launchpad to stardom

Marco Mengoni won Italy's
The X-Factor in 2009

The singer-songwriter Marco Mengoni, who rose to fame after winning the Italian version of the TV talent show The X-Factor, was born on this day in 1988 in Ronciglione in northern Lazio.

Mengoni triumphed in the 2009 edition - the third series of X-Factor on the public service channel Rai Due before it was bought up by subscription channel Sky Italia - during which he unveiled what would be his debut single, Dove si vola, which he sang for the first time at the semi-final stage.

The single, an example of the sophisticated pop-rock style that would become Mengoni’s trademark,  reached number one in the Italian downloads chart while a seven-track extended play album of the same name sold 70,000 copies, peaking at nine in the Italian albums chart.

Mengoni’s performances on The X-Factor had received favourable comments from both Mina and Adriano Celentano, the all-time bestselling artists in Italian popular music history.

Marco Mengoni in a presentation video for his hit single
L'essenziale, his Sanremo winner and Eurovision entry

The prize for winning The X-Factor was a recording contract with a value of €300,000 and automatic selection for the 2010, Sanremo Music Festival 2010, in which he finished third with Credimi ancora. The single was included in Mengoni’s second EP, Re matto, which topped the Italian singles chart.

His first full-length solo album, Solo 2.0, went straight to number one in the Italian albums chart when it was released in September 2011.  Whereas he had previously sung mostly compositions written by others, the tracks on Solo 2.0 were almost all co-written by Mengoni.

After spending much of 2012 touring, Mengoni entered Sanremo again in 2013 and this time won, with L’essenziale, which he wrote in collaboration with Roberto Casalino and Francesco De Benedettis.

Mengoni at a press conference ahead of
his performance at the 2013 Eurovision

L’essenziale was the lead single from Mengoni's second studio album, #prontoacorrere, It debuted at number one on the FIMI Singles Chart and downloads exceeded 120,000. It was the top selling track of the year by an Italian artist.

The song was also selected as Italy’s entry for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden.  Mengoni finished seventh - well behind the winner, Denmark’s Emmelie de Forest (Only Teardrops) - but the song caught the imagine of viewers and gained him many new fans outside Italy.

Since then, Mengoni has released three more studio albums - Parole in circolo and Le cose che non ho in 2015 and, this autumn, Atlantico - plus a live album, Marco Mengoni Live, a 2016 double album that included five previously unreleased studio tracks.

Atlantico has been top of the Italian album chart for four weeks, giving Mengoni a Christmas number one.

Mengoni grew up in Ronciglione, which is about 60km (37 miles) north of Rome, near Lago di Vico. At the age of 14, while a design student at secondary school, he took singing lessons. He soon tasted the experience of singing before an audience after his teacher invited him to join a vocal quintet which performed in piano bars and clubs.

The cover of Mengoni's Le cose che no ho,
his third studio album

He embarked on a solo singing career at 16, assembling a group of backing musicians to perform in small clubs, mixing covers with his own songs. At 19 he moved to Rome to study languages at university. His big break in The X-Factor came a year later.

Among Mengoni’s other achievements, he was the first Italian artist to win Best European Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards - in 2010 and 2015 - and the first Italian artist to perform at the Billboard Film & TV Music Conference in Los Angeles, in 2013.

Today, Mengoni lives in Milan.  In 2019, he embarks on a 16-date European tour, between April and May, beginning with shows in Germany, Switzerland and France, following by 12 appearances in Italy.  On May 25 and 26 he is scheduled to perform at the Arena di Verona, the Roman amphitheatre that has become one of Italy’s most prestigious concert venues.

The quaint medieval area of Ronciglione,
Mengoni's home town in Lazio

Travel tip:

Ronciglione, known locally as Ronció, is a town about 20km (12 miles ) from Viterbo located in the Cimini mountains, on the southeast slope of the former volcano crater now housing Lake Vico.  The main sights include a well-preserved medieval centre, a castle originally built in the middle ages, with characteristic angle rounded towers, and a Baroque cathedral designed by Pietro da Cortona, rebuilt by Carlo Rainaldi between 1671 and 1695. The bell tower is from 1734. The cathedral houses a Tryptych of Christ by the Viterbese painter Gabriele di Francesco.  Ronciglione is known for its carnival and the Palio of the Manna, which features riderless horses competing for each of nine contrade (parishes).

The Arena di Verona is now a major venue for both
opera performances and music concerts

Travel tip:

The Arena di Verona in Piazza Bra is a wonderful surviving example of a first-century Roman amphitheatre, which has now become a famous location for large-scale, outdoor productions of opera each summer.  The arena was built in in AD 30 on a site which was then beyond the city walls. It could host more than 30,000 spectators in ancient times, double the capacity permitted today. It was thanks to the enthusiasm of the tenor Giovanni Zenatello and the impresario Ottone Rovato in the early part of the 20th century that operatic performances became the arena’s staple. They put on a staging of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida in August 1913, to mark the birth of Verdi 100 years before in 1813. Musical luminaries such as Puccini and Mascagni were in attendance and since then summer seasons of opera have been mounted continually at the arena, apart from during the war years.


More reading:

Why Adriano Celentano is Italy's all-time biggest-selling star

Mina - the Italian icon who defied convention

The enduring talent of Eros Ramazzotti

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Natale - Christmas Day

800: Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman Emperor

1874: The birth of soprano Lina Cavalieri


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Maria De Filippi - television presenter

One of the most popular faces on Italian TV

Maria De Filippi has become one of the
most popular presenters on Italian TV

The television presenter Maria De Filippi, who has hosted numerous talk and talent shows in a career spanning 25 years, was born on this day in 1961 in Milan.

De Filippi is best known as the presenter of the long-running talent show Amici de Maria De Filippi, which completed its 17th season this year, having been launched in 2001.

The show’s predecessor, called simply Amici, was hosted by De Filippi from 1993 onwards.

One of the most popular faces on Italian television, De Filippi has been married since 1995 to the veteran talk show host and journalist Maurizio Costanzo, who celebrated his 80th birthday this year.

The daughter of a drugs company representative and a Greek teacher, De Filippi was born in Milan before moving at age 10 to Mornico Losana, a village in the province of Pavia, where her parents owned a vineyard.

A graduate in law, she had ambitions of a career as a magistrate but in 1989, while she was working in the legal department of a video cassette company, she had a chance meeting with Costanzo at a conference in Venice to discuss ways of combating musical piracy.

Maria De Filippi presented the 2017 Sanremo Music
Festival along another popular TV host, Carlo Conti

She clearly made an impression on the broadcaster, already well known as the face of the Maurizio Costanzo Show. He soon invited her to move to Rome to work for his communication and image company.

What began as a professional relationship then turned into a romance. Costanzo, who was separated from his third wife, the television presenter  Marta Flavi, moved in with De Filippi and after five years they were married, in 1995.

The chance for De Filippi to break into television came in 1992 when the original choice as presenter of the Amici show, Lella Costa, withdrew after becoming pregnant.  With little time to find a replacement, the producers decided to take a chance with De Filippi, despite her lack of experience, and it paid off handsomely.

The show, modelled on the United States hit Fame, featuring a school in which two groups of aspiring young singers and dancers compete against each other before a panel of judges, proved hugely popular, twice winning coveted Telegatto awards, and De Filippi was soon being offered more television work.

Maria De Filippi survived a car bomb
attack on her husband in 1993

She had another hit with Uomini e donne (Men and Women), which began as a talk show focusing on conflicts between husband and wife but evolved into a dating show.

De Filippi became a judge on Canale 5’s Italia’s Got Talent in 2009, alongside Gerry Scotti and Rudy Zerbi, a position she kept until Mediaset lost the rights to the show in 2014, after which she was asked to front a new show, Tù si que vales.

Alongside Carlo Conti, she presented the Sanremo Music Festival in 2017 and currently presents Uomini e donne, Tù si que vales and C’è posta per te (You’ve Got Mail) as well as Amici, and produces a number of other shows.

Before they were married, she and Costanzo had a lucky escape in 1993 from a Mafia-organised car bomb attack, a response to a number of programmes Costanzo produced focusing on the fight against the Cosa Nostra in Sicily.

The bomb detonated in the Via Ruggero Fauro, close to the Parioli Theatre in Rome where the Maurizio Costanzo Show was filmed, but Costanzo and De Filippi were not in the car they usually used. Their driver and bodyguard suffered injuries but they were unhurt.

UPDATE: Sadly, De Filippi was widowed in February, 2023, when Costanzo died at the age of 84 in a clinic in Rome, where he had been recovering from colon surgery. After a funeral at the Basilica of Santa Maria in Montesanto, he was buried at the Italian capital's Campo Verano cemetery.

The landscapes of the Oltrepò Pavese, which includes Mornico
Losana, give it the look of rural Tuscany

Travel tip:

Mornico Losana, where De Filippi moved when she was 10 years old, is in the Oltrepò Pavese, an area of scenic beauty south of the Po river in Lombardy that is often called the Tuscany of the North, on account of its rolling hills, medieval villages and castles and panoramic views. It is the largest wine producing area of Lombardy and one of the largest in Italy, specialising in Pinot Nero grapes. The landscape is scattered with vineyards and is popular with hikers and mountain bikers.

The Teatro Parioli, part of the wealthy Parioli
neighbourhood, north of Rome's city centre

Travel tip:

The Parioli district, in which the Parioli Theatre is located on Via Giosuè Borsi, is one of Rome's wealthiest residential neighbourhoods. Located north of the city centre, it is notable for its tree-lined streets and elegant houses, and for some of Rome's finest restaurants. The Auditorium Parco della Musica and the Villa Ada, once the Rome residence of the Italian royal family and surrounded by the second largest park in the city, can also be found within the Parioli district.

Rome hotels from TripAdvisor

More reading:

Gerry Scotti - host of Italy's Millionaire

Why Sanremo winner Adriano Celentano is Italy's biggest selling recording artist of all time

The remarkable life of veteran talk show host Maurizio Costanzo

Also on this day:

1443: The birth of Pope Julius II

1687: The birth of composer and violinist Francesco Gemianini

1861: The birth of World War One general Armando Diaz


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Tiziana ‘Tosca’ Donati - singer

Versatile performer whose range spans musicals to sacred songs

The singer Tiziana Donati, known as Tosca, during
one of her stage performances

The singer Tiziana Donati, who performs under the stage name Tosca, was born on this day in 1967 in Rome.

Winner of the Sanremo Festival in 1996, Tosca has recorded 10 studio albums, released the same number of singles and has recorded duets with many other artists.

She has enjoyed a successful stage career, appearing in numerous theatrical productions, and has been invited to perform songs for several movies, including the title track for Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Jane Eyre in 1996. She also sang and spoke the part of Anastasia in the Italian dubbed version of the Disney cartoon of the same name.

At Christmas in 1999, she participated in concerts in churches in Italy where she performed Latin songs set to music by Vincenzo Zitello and Stefano Melone.

Following this she began a collaboration with the Vatican, taking part in several televised events to commemorate the Jubilee of 2000, and was chosen to sing the Mater Iubilaei, the Marian anthem of the Jubilee, in a ceremony led by Pope John Paul II.

Throughout 2000, she toured with Musica Caeli, a concert made up of never-before performed sacred chants, staged in some of the biggest churches and cathedrals around the world.

Tosca was spotted singing in a piano bar in Rome in the
1990s before winning the Sanremo Festival in 1996

Tiziana said her love of singing began as a child when she suffered from acute articular rheumatism, a debilitating health condition affecting the joints that prevented her taking part in normal activities.  She did, however, accompany her grandmother to church almost every day and soon set her heart on becoming a member of the choir.

She went along to choir practice and was accepted and drew a sense of pride and self-worth from being asked to stand on a chair and sing at family occasions. Singing and later acting gave her a sense of purpose.

In her teens, Donati joined a theatre company in Rome and began singing in a piano bar in the city, where she was spotted by Renzo Arbore, a musician and television presenter, who invited to sing on the show Il caso Sanremo, a unique programme in which winning songs from different years of the Sanremo Festival were placed on “trial” in a set made to resemble a courtroom.

The exposure propelled her into the public eye. She adopted Tosca as a stage name and released her first album in 1992.

Tiziana Donati pictured during a studio recording
session with fellow musician Chico Buarque

Her big break, though, was winning Sanremo itself in 1996 with Vorrei incontrarti fra cent'anni - I Want To Meet You In One Hundred Years - a song written by Rosalino Cellamare, who performed under the stage name Ron, and who also provided backing vocals and guitar.

After another appearance at Sanremo the following year, she released an album, entitled Incontri e passaggi of songs written for her by artists such as Lucio Dalla, Chico Buarque de Holanda, Grazia Di Michele, Ennio Morricone and Mariella Nava, which won her the Targa Tenco prize as the year’s outstanding performer.

Since 2000, Donati has mixed concerts with stage shows and musicals and has recently worked as a section director at the Pasolini Workshop in Rome, a venture - named in honour of the film director Pier Paolo Pasolini - run in collaboration with the University of Rome and the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia to unearth and nurture new talent.

Still in demand today for high-profile roles, recently starring at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in the touring show Donne come noi - Women Like Us - based on a book of the same name about 100 Italian women who have changed their lives and those of others.

Last year, Tosca celebrated her life in music with a sell-out concert at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome in which she was joined on stage by artists including Nicola Piovani, Danilo Rea and Joe Barbieri, all of whom had become friends at different points of her career.

The saxophonist Bobby Watson has
performed at Gregory's in Rome

Travel tip:

One of Rome’s traditional music venues is the jazz club Gregory’s, which can be found in Via Gregoriana, a short walk from Piazza di Spagna and the Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti. The club has a ‘hall of fame’ that includes the likes of Bobby Durham, Victor Lewis, Steve Grossman, Gregory Hutchinson, Bobby Watson and Scott Hamilton, all of whom have performed at the venue.  The club hosts live sets almost every night, starting at around 9.30pm. A sister venue, Gregory’s By The River, stages live music during the summer months on the edge of the Tiber at Castel Sant’Angelo.

The Teatro Argentina in Rome is one of the city's
oldest opera houses, inaugurated in 1732

Travel tip:

The Teatro Argentina, where Tosca recently performed in the show Donne come noi, is a traditional opera venue in the square Largo di Torre Argentina. Built over the Curia of Pompey - the meeting hall in which Julius Caesar was murdered in 44BC - it is one of the oldest theatres in the city, commissioned by the Sforza-Cesarini family and inaugurated in 1732. Rossini's The Barber of Seville was given its premiere there in February 1816. It has staged drama productions as well as opera and music. In the mid-20th centuries, works by Luigi Pirandello, Henrik Ibsen and Maxim Gorky were performed there for the first time.

More reading:

How Enrico Caruso inspired Lucio Dalla

Why Sanremo winner Adriano Celentano is Italy's biggest-selling recording artist of all time

The Barber of Seville premieres at Teatro Argentina

Also on this day:

1875: The birth of flautist Lorenzo De Lorenzo

1991: Anti-Mafia hero Libero Grassi is murdered in Palermo

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Pippo Baudo - TV presenter

Record-breaking host of Sanremo festival

TV presenter Pippo Baudo has been a
familiar face for decades

The television presenter Pippo Baudo, who became one of the most recognisable personalities on Italian television in a broadcasting career spanning six decades, was born on this day in 1936 in Militello in Val di Catania, in Sicily.

Baudo has presented numerous shows for the national broadcaster Rai and for private networks but is probably best known as the host of the annual Sanremo Music Festival and the presenter of the immensely popular Sunday afternoon magazine show Domenica In.

He was the face of Sanremo a record 13 times between 1968 and 2008, eclipsing another much-loved TV host, Mike Bongiorno, who presented the prestigious song contest on 11 occasions.

Baudo has anchored or co-hosted Domenica In 11 times.  His appearance on the 2016-17 edition of the show came 37 years after he presented the programme for the first time in 1979.

His other major shows include Settevoci, Canzonissima, Fantastico, Serata d'onore and Novecento.

Pippo - short for Giuseppe - is the son of a lawyer, whose father had ambitions for his son to follow a similar career path.

But Pippo was attracted to the idea of performing. While he was a boy he would play the piano and sing songs during the interval at a theatre owned by a family friend and though he duly studied law at the University of Catania, it was not with complete focus.

Pippo Baudo (right) with his predecessors on Domenica
 In (Corrado Montani) and Sanremo (Mike Bongiorno)

A story he has told many times relates to being asked to host the ‘Miss Sicily’ beauty contest in the beautiful town of Chiaramonte Gulfi, in the hills above Ragusa, almost 90km (56 miles) south of Catania. It was a prestigious gig for a young man such as Baudo and he did not want to pass up the opportunity to impress.

The problem was that it was the night before his graduation, he had no car and there was no way using public transport that he could possibly be in Catania in time for the ceremony. In desperation, he rose at dawn and hitched a life on a farmer’s pick-up truck heading for Catania, spending the journey lying on top of boxes of fruit and vegetables but arriving just in time to graduate.

He never practised in law, however. He made his first appearance on television in 1959 as a pianist and singer with a backing orchestra on variety shows. He began fronting the occasional show in the 1960s before his big break came by chance in 1966.

Baudo had made a pilot episode for Rai of a talent contest called Settevoci - Seven Voices. The television company’s bosses had been underwhelmed and had no plans to broadcast it. But one Sunday afternoon, the reel containing the latest episode of the popular American series Rin Tin Tin did not turn up and Rai had a last-minute gap in their schedule.

Pippo Baudo in 1970, at the peak of his popularity

Somehow, the Settevoci pilot was shown instead and was an instant success, gaining significant viewing figures. Rai hurriedly commissioned more and it became part of the Sunday entertainment schedule for the next four years.

It helped launch the careers of many popular Italian singers and other performers, as have many of Baudo's shows.  It is claimed that, to one degree or another, stars such as Al Bano, Beppe Grillo, Tullio Solenghi, Heather Parisi, Eros Ramazzotti, Lorella Cuccarini, Laura Pausini, Giorgia and Andrea Bocelli can all thank Pippo Baudo for giving them the chance to showcase their talents.

Nicknamed “Super Pippo” for his enduring popularity and ability to bounce back from setbacks, Baudo has been married twice, the second time to the opera singer Katia Ricciarelli, from whom he was divorced in 2007. He has two children, Alessandro and Tiziana, and is a grandfather and great-grandfather.

Via Porta della Terra, a typically elegant street in
Militello in Val di Catania

Travel tip:

Militello in Val di Catania is an attractive town on the northern slopes of the Iblean Mountains, about 50km (31 miles) southwest of Catania. It is sometimes known as the Florence of the Iblei because of its wealth of palaces, churches and monasteries. The town had a golden age in the 17th century during the rule of Prince Francesco Branciforte, whose family built the Barresi Branciforte Castle. Although many buildings were destroyed during an earthquake in 1693, considerable work went into rebuilding. In 2002 the town was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The main square in Chiaramonte Gulfi

Travel tip:

Nicknamed 'il Balcone della Sicilia' (Sicily's balcony), the town of Chiaramonte Gulfi is perched on a hill 15km (9 miles) north of Ragusa. Its panoramic aspect on a clear day can offer views to the south across the Valley of the Ippari and the towns of Comiso, Vittoria and Acate as far as the Mediterranean sea, and even of Mount Etna in the north. The town is also famed for its olive oil, accredited with the Denominazione d'Origine Protetta (DOP), which means only oil produced within a specific area can be labelled as Chiaramonte oil.

Also on this day:

1422: The birth of condottiero Federico da Montefeltro

1687: The birth of operatic castrato Gatetano Berenstadt

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Bobby Solo - pop singer

Sixties star found fame after Sanremo disqualification

Bobby Solo was heavily influenced
by his idol Elvis Presley

Bobby Solo, who was twice winner of Italy's prestigious Sanremo Festival yet had his biggest hit with a song that was disqualified, was born Roberto Satti on this day in 1945 in Rome.

The singer and songwriter won the contest in 1965 and again in 1969 but it was the controversy over his 1964 entry that thrust him into the spotlight and sent him to the top of the Italian singles charts with the first record to sell more than one million copies in Italy.

To emphasise that the competition was to select the best song, rather than the best artist, each entry was sung by two artists, one a native Italian, the other an international guest star. In 1964, Solo was paired with the American singer Frankie Laine to showcase Una lacrima sul viso (A Tear on Your Face).

Laine performed the song in English but Solo was stricken with a throat problem. Rather than withdraw, he sang the song with the help of a backing track, only to be told afterwards that this was against the rules.

Solo celebrates his victory at Sanremo in 1965

The song was disqualified but attracted such attention that it became a huge hit, topping the Italian singles chart for eight weeks. Sales in Italy and other countries eventually topped two million and set Solo on the way to a highly successful career.

On the back of the song's success, Solo - a rock and roll singer in the mould of his idol, Elvis Presley - starred in a movie, also entitled Una lacrima sul viso, in which he sang not only the title track but several other of his songs.

In 1965 he returned to Sanremo, where he was chosen to sing Se piangi, se ridi (If you cry, if you laugh), of which the American folk ensemble the New Christy Minstrels performed an English version, and this time won.  The song gave Solo his second No 1 in the Italian charts and gave him fifth place in the Eurovision Song Contest the same year.

Four years later, partnered with the Italian female star Iva Zanicchi, Solo achieved his third Sanremo triumph with Zingara.

Other 60s hits included Quello sbagliato,Cristina and La Casa del Signore, the Italian version of Elvis Presley’s Crying In The Chapel, his 1966 Sanremo entry Questa volta, which he sung with English group The Yardbirds,  Per far piangere un uomo, an Italian cover of the Tom Jones song, To Make A Big Man Cry, and an Italian cover of Scott McKenzie’s San Francisco.

In all, Solo participated in 12 Sanremo Festivals between 1964 and 2003 and in a recording career spanning six decades has made more than 40 singles and in excess of 30 albums.  His total record sales have been conservatively estimated at more than five million and he still performs today, well into his 70s.

Bobby Solo on stage in 2018

The son of an airline executive from Friuli and an Istrian mother, Solo acquired his love for music, especially American country and rock and roll, from his brother-in-law, an American serviceman who had married his sister and lived in Verona.

Blessed with a good voice, he taught himself to play the guitar and after watching Elvis Presley in the film Jailhouse Rock he was inspired to begin writing songs in his teens. After his father had been relocated to Linate airport in Milan, he earned an audition with the Milan company Dischi Recordi, who signed him up and would produce all his records until the early 1970s.

Solo acquired his stage name at around the same time, and there is a story - perhaps apocryphal - that he became Bobby Solo by accident, the intention having been that he would perform simply as Bobby. According to the story,  the secretary who took down the record label details for his first single mistook the instruction that he would be known as "solo Bobby" (only Bobby) and wrote down his name as Bobby Solo.

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan

Travel tip:

Dischi Recordi, which operated from 1958 until the company was sold in 1994, had its headquarters right in the heart of Milan in Via Giovanni Berchet, a stone's throw from the Duomo and across Via Ugo Foscolo from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the magnificent 1861 shopping arcade, with its central dome and arching glass and cast iron roof, which is the oldest shopping mall  in the world still in use and has become a Milan landmark.  The Palazzo Dischi is now the home of upmarket sports car manufacturer Ferrari's flagship merchandise store.

Milan hotels by Booking.com

The harbour at Sanremo in Liguria

Travel tip:

Sanremo in Liguria, the Italian Riviera resort that has been home to the Sanremo Festival since 1951, expanded rapidly in the mid-18th century, when the phenomenon of tourism began to take hold, albeit primarily 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 made it his permanent home.

More reading:

How Gigliola Cinquetti conquered Sanremo and Eurovision at just 16

Eros Ramazotti - the Sanremo winner with 65 million sales

Little Tony - Italy's answer to Little Richard

Also on this day:

1848: The Five Days of Milan

1944: When Vesuvius last blew its top


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