Sofia Rositani – Editor-in-Chief
This year’s Festival di Sanremo 2023 was very interesting.
This year, the winner was a power ballad with the voice of an absolute angel, Marco Mengoni with his song “Due Vite.” Second place went to “Alba” by Ultimo. Third place went to “Superoi” by Mr. Rain, which should have been the winner.
This is Mengoni’s second year winning Sanremo, he won in 2013.
The first night of the music festival was a rollercoaster ride. First, we find out Gianni Morandi is one of the hosts. Then Morandi and Amadeus, the other host, take a selfie with Chiara Ferragni. After that, Blanco performs his song and ruins the flowers on stage which causes the crowd to boo him.
Each night of the festival has a runtime of four hours. The first, third and final nights were longer, each with a runtime of five hours and thirteen minutes. This was expected, when I watch Amici Di Maria Di Filippi, each episode is at least 2 and a half hours and that usually runs as an after-school show.
The Festival Di Sanremo is a three-day festival in Sanremo, Italy that has the biggest singers in the country compete to make it to Eurovision each year. But during the show, there are appearances from other artists and actors. This year they had two big performances from American bands, Black Eyed Peas and Depeche Mode. Both bands were good, but I honestly cared more about the singers competing, so I skipped that part.
The covers this year were also great, which included songs spanned from the 1960’s to the 1980’s. I enjoyed the performance Gianni Morandi did with Sangiovanni.
Mr. Rain is a prominent name in Italy with a lot of his songs charting top 10 in the country. His song “Superoi” should have been the winner of the festival because that song has the potential of winning Eurovision, or at least getting top 10.
No Italian singer or group has won Eurovision since Måneskin won in 2021. Since then, this band has been touring the world and have made a name for themselves. This is something all Italian artists hope for especially when going on Sanremo.
As a child I grew up watching movies like “La Vita E Bella,” “Johnny Stecchio” and “Pinocchio,” the real one not the Disney version. Even though my parents absolutely hated his version, I love it to this day. All these movies have the legendary actor Roberto Benigni in them. He attended Sanremo this year as a guest. It was so nice to see him on something again even though he has aged a lot since his last films.
Watching Sanremo every year gives such a sense of normalcy and happiness with a mixture of feeling like I am home again. I love Italian music and hearing my language sung for millions across the world to hear in Eurovision. While I am not a huge fan of the winner, I am so glad he sang in Italian because that is slowly becoming less popular for most singers in Eurovision. I am looking forward to his performance at Eurovision in May.
