Ornella Vanoni died in Milan. He was 91 years old. The news was released by the Corriere della Sera website. Shortly before 11pm, the Milanese singer suffered a cardiac arrest in her home. The 118 rescuers arrived when unfortunately there was nothing left to do.
An original and highly refined interpreter, Ornella Vanoni was one of the queens of Italian music, with a very long career during which she managed to try her hand at different genres, from Songs of the Mala to jazz to bossa nova, to songwriting, managing to make herself popular thanks to a highly recognizable interpretative style and vocal timbre.
During her sixty-year career, many of the most important authors, not only Italian, have written for her and she has collaborated with numerous artists, including Gino Paoli, Dario Fo, New Trolls, Paolo Conte, Fabrizio De André, Ivano Fossati, Lucio Dalla, Sergio Bardotti, Mogol, Giorgio Calabrese, Franco Califano, Bruno Lauzi, Grazia Di Michele, Renato Zero and Riccardo Cocciante.
Daughter of a pharmaceutical industrialist, after studying at the Ursulines, she attended various colleges in Switzerland, France and England, studying languages and initially with the desire to become a beautician. In 1953 he enrolled in the Academy of Dramatic Art of Giorgio Strehler's Piccolo Teatro. He began to propose himself as a singer during the moments of pause between the acts of theatrical performances, singing ballads of the French Revolution with an angular and unusual voice.
In 1956 she made her debut as an actress in Pirandello's “Six Characters in Search of an Author”. The following year, authors such as Strehler, Dario Fo, Fiorenzo Carpi and Fausto Amodei constructed the so-called “Canzoni della Mala” starting from old dialect ballads of songs, in which he sang the stories of boys killed in mines, scoundrels, unfortunates and prisoners (“Canto di carcerati Calabresi”, “La Zolfara”, “Senti come la vosa la sirena”). Strehler organizes a show for her which arrives at the Spoleto Festival in 1959 and the curiosity and mystery for this singer grows, also fueled by the fact that Strehler pretends that these songs are ancient ballads rediscovered.
Thus was born the image of Ornella Vanoni as an “intellectual singer” who underlines, through interpretation and gestures, the lyrics of the songs. The “Cantante della Mala” achieved good critical success but ran into radio and television censorship and some criticisms of upper-class snobbery.
Ornella begins to record with the historical label Ricordi, which opens the pop music section with her by publishing some singles of the gang (“Ma mi”, “Hanno ammazzato il Mario”).
The meeting in 1960 with Gino Paoli brought her closer to songwriting and led to an author-performer collaboration of memorable songs. From now on there is only music, records, TV and festivals. She won the S. Genesio award for best actress in 1961 for “The Idiot” by Achard and “The Bersagliere's Girlfriend” by Anton. The following year she was called by Garinei and Giovannini to bring “Rugantino” to New York. In the meantime she marries the impresario and ex-singer Lucio Ardenzi.
He won the first prize together with Modugno at the Naples Festival with “Tu Sì na cosa grande” and also won the second singing the song “Ammore mio” with Nunzio Gallo.
She achieved two great successes in 1963 with “Senza Fine” and “Che cosa c'è”, both written for her by Gino Paoli. In the following years he participated in several editions of the Sanremo Festival with the songs “Abbracciami forte” (1965), “Io ti darò dipiù” (1966), “La musica è finite” (1967), “Casa Bianca” (1968), written by Don Backy, and “Eternità” (1970).
At the end of the 1960s Vanoni recorded “Una RAISONI MORE”, “Un'Ora Sola Ti Wish”, “The Appointment” (a cover of the Brazilian song “Sentado à Beira do Caminho” by Erasmo Carlos and Roberto Carlos) and “Non Dirmi niente”, a cover of “Don't Make Me Over” by Burt Bacharach. In 1972 he sang “Quei giorni Insieme a te”, the theme of Lucio Fulci's thriller film “Non si sevizia un paperino”.
In the meantime he hosts 5 episodes of the TV show Studio Uno.
For a few years she moved to Rome and founded her record company “Vanilla” while her musical activity continued with themed LPs, supported by the long artistic and human partnership with Sergio Bardotti which led her to write the lyrics she interpreted and to collaborate – enjoying enormous success – with the New Trolls. It will always be with Bardotti that Ornella approaches the fantastic world of Brazil of Vinicius de Moraes and Toquinho, sublimated in the 1976 album “La desire, madness, unconsciousness, allegria”. The collaboration with Bardotti ends with the album “Ornella e….”, recorded with the greatest jazz musicians in the world: George Benson, Herbie Hancock, Steve Gadd, Gil Evans, Michael Brecker, Ron Carter.
In the 80s he published “Ricetta di donna”, “Uomini” and “Ti lascio una canzone” (with Gino Paoli). In 1989 he returned to the Sanremo Festival with the song “Io come fare”. In 1999 he recorded “Alberi”, a duet with Enzo Gragnaniello. In 2004 he published an album of duets with Paoli to celebrate his seventieth birthday.
The inclusion of his song “The Appointment” (1970) on the soundtrack to Steven Soderbergh's “Ocean's Twelve” in 2004 spurred a rediscovery of his music internationally.
In the summer of 2020 he signed a contract with the record company Bmg and announced the preparation of a new album of unreleased songs, preceded by the single “A smile inside the cry”, written by Francesco Gabbani. Titled “Unica”, the album was released on January 29, 2021 and consists of eleven songs arranged by Fabio Ilacqua and produced; it includes the writing collaborations of Pacifico, Renato Zero, Giuliano Sangiorgi (author of the second single Arcobaleno, released on January 29) and Gabbani and there are three duets: “Carezza d'autumn” with Carmen Consoli, “Tu/me” with Virginia Raffaele and “La mia parte” with Fabio Ilacqua. In the same year the ironic and refined summer hit “Toy Boy” was released, with Colapesce and Dimartino, whose video clip was directed by Luca Guadagnino. In September, the documentary film “Senza fine”, directed by Elisa Fuksas and produced by Tenderstories, was premiered as a special event in the official selection of the “Authors' Days” during the 78th Venice International Film Festival, a meeting-clash with the director between memories and songs; Paolo Fresu, Samuele Bersani and Vinicio Capossela also appear in the film.
In February 2023, Ornella Vanoni returns as a guest at the last evening of the 73rd edition of the Sanremo Festival.
On November 21, 2025, the sad news of his passing arrived, at the age of 91.
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
