Ma mi ornella vanoni biography

(Milan, 1934 – )

By Elisabetta Maino(University of de Lisbon)

Today, talking about Ornella Vanoni (Milan, 1934) means retracing the last eighty years of Italian history. Vanoni is one of those performers whose songs, like it or not, live in our heads, flow through our veins… Ornella is an impeccable artist, as well as a resolute, attentive, sharp and very lucid woman.^[1]

Un filo di trucco, un filo di tacco^[2](A touch of makeup, a Touch of Heel) is the theatrical show which Vanoni herself brought to the most important stages in Italy as well as Switzerland. The journey began in 2014, at the dawn of her 80th birthday, and continued into 2015, almost two years of performances in which Ornella talked to us about life and love, retracing her life as a woman and an artist.

I thought of this tour and wrote it myself, it will move you and make you smile, I will be in it, all of me.^[3]

Let’s take a step back to the 1950s, when it all began. In 1956, Ornella Vanoni joined the theater company of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, and it was here that she achieved her first successes as an actress and performer of the Songs of the Mala (Lowlife), the Milanese underworld. The songs were written by Giorgio Strehler, Vanoni’s partner who w

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