Mara Maionchi returns to talk about the long-distance controversy with Tiziano Ferro. The singer, in a story on Instagram, alluded to the fact that the record company may have pushed him to lose weight and hide his homosexuality, in order to be able to sign his debut contract. A mystification that would have forced him into unhappiness and led to alcoholism. During the press conference to present the Eurovision Song Contest 2024, Maionchi – commentator for Italy with Gabriele Corsi – responded to the accusations of forced weight loss: “It is true that we shared the desire to lose weight with Tiziano. I insisted a lot. But we felt it wasn’t right for an 18 year old boy to weigh so much, it’s not like being big is healthy. I think he didn’t do anything by force. Plus the show has some needs. Some, it’s not an obligation.”
Regarding the words spoken by the record company to Belve, who accused the singer of ingratitude towards her, he reiterates: “We worked so hard together, I would have liked to receive a ‘hi, how are you doing’ and ‘merry Christmas’ every now and then, that’s all . I prefer human gratitude to economic gratitude.”
After the press conference, Maionchi released a statement on Instagram: “I answered a question by giving priority to my emotional one without arguing further: human gratitude, the one that continues relationships beyond the profession, was the an absence that is most regrettable to me, especially for me who have maintained long-lasting relationships with many artists, those with more successful careers as well as those who have undertaken other paths. Someone has hatefully advanced the hypothesis that it has prevented you from being yourself: I smile because my history of closeness to this topic speaks for me who, among other things, considers that freedom and self-determination are sacred”.
In an interview with MowMagazine, the same site on which the article accusing Maionchi was published, Alberto Salerno defends his wife: “What Mara meant was not that Tiziano had never thanked us, because he did, but one might even make a phone call once every death of the Pope to at least find out how you are. It could have been a relationship that didn’t end in absolute nothingness, but this thing never happened. This is what Mara meant. When the relationship ended, they never spoke to each other again, but you can maintain a friendly relationship even without necessarily having to work together.”
It wouldn’t even be true, according to Salerno, that they prevented him from calling himself gay: “He can say what he wants but it’s absolutely not true, on the contrary. If I really have to tell you all about it, we had invited him to tell us what his feelings might be, because we are aware of certain situations and have always been used to them. It would have been a stretch to our way of thinking to say something like that to him. We even asked him if he had any inclinations of that kind, but he told us no and denied this to us, so it went exactly the opposite of what he said. We helped him in everything and I don’t understand how he can say something like that, it’s an outright lie.” And on losing weight: “He weighed 111 kilos and I told him that he had to lose weight because at 20 he couldn’t weigh that much, it was a sick situation. We also took him to a dietician, a first level professor. It was something he had to do for himself, I did it for his health.”
