Ornella Vanoni

The driving force behind one of the most enduring and prolific careers in Italian song, Ornella Vanoni has charted some forty songs in the local charts since 1961. Born in Milan on September 22, 1934, she first came to the attention of theater director Giorgio Strehler, who cast her in plays by Bertolt Brecht. Noticed by an impresario, she soon began her career as a singer and actress, enjoying a string of hits in the early 1960s, including "Senza Fine" and "Che Cosa C'è", written in 1963 by Gino Paoli. In 1964, she won the Neapolitan Song Festival competition with the song "Tu Si Na Cosa Grande", then performed at the Sanremo Festival five times between 1965 and 1970, including the hit "Casa Bianca " (1968). His musical style diversified through contact with Italian songwriters and composers, and through a repertoire of cover versions. After the six classified tracks of L'Appuntamento (1970), Ornella Vanoni collaborated with the tandem Vincius Moraes and Toquinho on the album La Voglia la Pazzia l'Incoscienza l'Allegria (1976), which turned to bossa nova and Brazilian popular music. Further successes followed, culminating in the album Ornella e... (1986), marking her foray into vocal jazz with some of the great names in the genre. Honored with the title of Grand Officer of the Order of the Italian Republic in 1993, the singer, under contract to the Columbia label, produced an album of duets with artists of various generations on Piu di Me (2008), featuring Eros Ramazzotti, Mina and Giusy Ferreri, among others. Ten years later, he was awarded a special prize for his body of work at the Sanremo Festival. In 2021, the album Unica celebrates sixty years of her singing career. Three years later, despite an injury sustained in a fall, she returned with the album Diverse, featuring a new dance version of "Ti Voglio", with Elodie and Ditonellapiaga. On November 21, 2025, Ornella Vanoni died of a heart attack at the age of 91.