Years ago her phoniatrician told her: “You have such strong vocal cords that you can sing until you are ninety.” She replied annoyed that “no, not up to ninety”. And yet here we are, her on stage a few months before her ninetieth birthday and us downstairs jumping to our feet and applauding and shouting and doing everything we can to make sure she understands how much we love her. And in short, the phoniatrician was right.
It is a special occasion, the first of two concerts by Ornella Vanoni at the Arcimboldi so full of guests that they seem like intergenerational tributes to one of the most beautiful voices of our song. A celebration, in short, moreover held at her home, in Milan. For some, it is also a way to find her in music after she has established herself (again) as a television personality, free to say anything, without restraints, a shameless girl with grace, a model.
Life exhausts everyone and she is no exception. The velvety elegance and eroticism of the past have given way to irony and a lightness to imitate. He laughs at himself and makes you laugh, which is perhaps the only way to bear the weight of a lifetime. She appears with the curtain closed behind her and receives the first applause, she opens her arms, as if she wanted to take it physically too. D’Armani dressed, cheerful and delightfully unhinged, bourgeois, a woman of the Milanese class of another time and another temper. She has become fragile, but she is no longer measured as she once was, because that measure also came from the shyness of which she freed herself. Intone first Air, the curtain opens revealing behind her the six-piece band and Paolo Fresu who will go up and down the stage. A formidable trumpet player, he is now a familiar presence for Vanoni who tells him «what beautiful shoes you have», remembers that the first time he met him he seemed like a shaman but when he blew the trumpet he was a god, he says that «I couldn’t have Chet Baker, but I have him.”
The first songs dictate the tone of the concert: they talk about life, death and eternity, they are reflections on the past, they talk about things that end or are without end, and they obviously deal with love. The voice is there. It is obviously the voice of an eighty-nine year old, it’s not like we can expect the elastic timbre of the past. That’s what records are for. We’re not here to listen to a record, but for a bit of truth and she satisfies us. The voice is senile, at times it cracks, but it is a voice within which an incredible story is inscribed and therefore moving because it is almost always centred, it is within the songs. The impression is that when the music is loud, she gets lost a little. And halfway through the concert the voice becomes thinner and hoarser. She seems now a gigantic figure, now a little girl crushed by the music. Hearing and seeing her battle is exciting. She sings barefoot, «so I don’t fall», transmits good humor and lightness. It took her some time, but she learned to be happy on stage. It is a true myth in a world of boasters, of deaths of fame, of desperate people.
Guests of every type and generation join her: Patty Pravo with whom she sings “a song that I have always envied you”, the one written by Vasco, And tell me you don’t want to die; Giuliano Sangiorgi for Rainbow (“Now here comes a famous one”); Mahmood for The appointmentintroduced by Vanoni humming Gold suit; Gabbani duetting in A smile inside the tears; Madame singing alone on a backing track The good in the bad with Vanoni and the band watching her perform. It’s an oddity, it seems like a fragment of another show thrown into this one, but that’s fine and not so much because Francesca is good, but because her song allows the star of the evening to catch her breath and continue even stronger. There are also Colapesce and Dimartino who put the gloves on her from the video Toy Boy. The interpretation is so-so, but the song is perfect for saying that the irony, or rather the self-irony, remains of the eroticism of the past.
Someone complained about having bought a ticket for the second evening without knowing that a first evening would be added, tonight, with many more guests. I would like to reassure them: Vanoni gives her best when she sings alone, when she is inside her world, when she tackles jazzy and intense things, like Endless in the arrangement by Lucio Dalla, «a song that I have carried with me since I started». Or when in Tomorrow is another day he sings of the melancholy that never leaves you, another strong theme of his biography, and of the balance of a life “that I have never squared”.
The show goes on for an hour and three quarters without stopping, without an encore, with her punctually anticipating everyone and introducing the next song when the audience is still applauding the previous one. On stage there are Fabio Valdemarin (piano and musical direction with Lavezzi), Marco Zanoni (keyboards), Giovanna Famulari (cello), Federico Malaman (bass), Riccardo Bertuzzi (guitar) and Stefano Pisetta (drums), it’s also a talent to choose oneself good musicians. Often Fresu and Daniele Di Bonaventura join the bandoneon, which for some reason she continues to call Andrea, joking about her. It will be repeated tomorrow with other guests (Elisa, Calcutta, Ditonellapiaga, Gigi D’Alessio and again Fresu, Di Bonaventura, Lavezzi) and on 6 June at the Baths of Caracalla. Then she, who knows.
Vanoni made us understand once and for all not only that growing old is not a fault, but that neither is growing old on stage, on TV, in records. Getting old can also be a comic film, just as many dramatic things in life are comical. «Maybe I’ll die», he said a week ago to Fabio Fazio who asked her with what gesture he would close the concert at the Arcimboldi. She didn’t die, but she did a double ending by cheerfully singing what seemed like a kind of theme song and summary of everything, Music musicand then Flavor of salt, making us savor that “slightly bitter taste of lost things” which is another meaning of this concert. That is, let’s go and see them while they’re still there, let’s applaud them while they have the strength to perform, and then that era will be over.
A little before halfway through the concert, Vanoni acts The magic of a hug, the poem in which Neruda says that “most of the time a hug means detaching a little piece of oneself to give it to the other so that they can continue their journey less alone”. Perhaps these concerts are also the request for a big hug. The audience gave it to him, applauding happily at the end of the show. In the autobiography written with Giancarlo Dotto A beautiful girl Vanoni reports what Fabrizio De André, another man who was afraid of performing, told him a lifetime ago. He told her that «it’s a job for idiots to put yourself on stage, to show yourself like a performance animal, to be seen by everyone, to be understood by everyone». But he also knew it and she knows it too that it’s an incredible job.
