Italy will be represented at Eurovision 2024 by Sanremo winner Angelina Mango

The 74th pop song festival ended in the Italian city of Sanremo. The winner was Angelina Mango, a 22-year-old singer from the province of Potenza. She will represent Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest 2024, which will be held in Malmo, Sweden this year. He talks about the main musical competition of the Apennine Peninsula Igor Gavrilov.

Festival di Sanremo is one of the oldest regular music events in Europe. The songs performed at the festival in the 1980s belonged to that small category of capitalist music production that was freely available on this side of the Iron Curtain. A compact cassette with the inscription “Italians” was in every home and, quite possibly, disappeared into time along with the devices that played the recording. But somewhere deep in the subconscious it still plays, and not only in Russia. That’s why the show by the “Evening Urgant” team “Ciao, 2020!” was such a success, and among last year’s European hits on Netflix was the film “Erri’s Collection” about a studio that replicated cassettes with recordings of singers from San Remo. Even in geopolitically difficult times, the Italians Pupo and Gazebo did not refuse an invitation to last year’s “Legends of Retro FM” festival.

In the new century, the stars of Festival di Sanremo profess current musical genres. Electronic artist The Bloody Beetroots (real name Bob Rifo, second place in 2014) records with Paul McCartney and plays at the biggest raves, Maneskin (first place in 2021) performs with The Rolling Stones and tours the best rock venues in the USA, and Mahmoud, who won in 2019 and 2022, combines the traditions of classic pop songs with a hip-hop beat.

At the same time, the modern Italian audience is ready to give first place to a completely traditional song if it really deserves it. This happened with Francesco Gabbani in 2017 and with Marco Mengoni in 2023.

Festival di Sanremo 2024 took place at the Ariston Theater over five evenings. 30 contestants competed for the main award. Both in the competition program and as guest performers, those whom the audience of “old San Remo” remembers very well appeared on stage. Toto Cutugno, who passed away last year, appeared – as is now practiced, on the screen, accompanied by a live orchestra. There was Gianni Morandi and Ricchi e Poveri. On the fourth evening, veterans supported the competitors on stage. Italian rock legend Gianna Nannini sang her song “Meravigliosa Creatura” with Rose Villain. A medley of songs by Umberto Tozzi was performed jointly by the author and the group The Kolors. The author of the musical Notre Dame de Paris, Riccardo Cocciante, appeared on stage with a Tuscan rapper named Irama, and the group Eiffel 65 performed with Fred De Palma. Eiffel 65 are the most successful Italian authors of the current century. Their 1998 song “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” has been covered countless times, with their latest cover, “I’m Good (Blue)” by David Guetta and Bebe Rexha, remaining in hit radio rotation for several years.

There were guests from abroad. Skunk Anansie lead singer Skin performed Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” with the duo Santi Francesi, it was a perfect combination of voices. British singer with Italian roots Jack Savoretti supported contestant Antonio Diodato. They like to bring foreigners to San Remo not even to play music, but simply as wedding generals.

On the second evening, John Travolta took the stage and was forced by host Amadeus to perform a dance from Pulp Fiction—the film celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.

It turns out that after all these years and hundreds of similar shows, Mr. Travolta can still be ordered for a holiday with the most famous twist in the history of cinema. There were a lot of jokes about the dance on stage during the remaining days of the festival, including the actor’s Hollywood colleague Russell Crowe and Eros Ramazzotti, who celebrated the 40th anniversary of his victory at the festival in San Remo with the song “Terra Promessa” (“Promised Land”). “Five hundred million children live in conflict zones, while others will never see their promised land,” Ramazzotti addressed the audience. “Enough blood, enough wars. World!”

The winner of the show, Angelina Mango, combines the DNA of the Festival di Sanremo of the 20th and 21st centuries. She is the daughter of the second soloist of Matia Bazar, Laura Valente, who in 1989 joined the team in place of the performer of the group’s main hits, Antonella Ruggiero. Angelina’s father Giuseppe Mango is a famous Italian singer, a colleague of Lucio Dalla, who performed in San Remo in 1985 and 1987.

The winning song “La Noia” (“Boredom”), with which Angelina Mango will represent Italy at the next Eurovision, combines Italian melodic and cumbia rhythms with catchy lines like “the crown of thorns will be the dress code for my party.” The song was co-written by rap artist Madame and producer named Dardast. “Boredom is seen as a negative thing, but it’s actually time you dedicate to yourself,” says Mango. “Between a life full of ups and downs and a life full of boredom, I will always choose a life of ups and downs, but I always leave myself time for boredom.”