Milva

Writing about Mina inspired me to look back on another italian singer I loved for many years and who belongs to same category of "sacred 1960s" music legends. There are three of them: Mina,Milva and Ornella Vanoni - italians love to discuss and argue which one is better but for me its all orange and apples, each of them is special in her own way.

Milva - affectionally called "Goro panther" - belongs to same generation as Mina but her music path was completely different. Though both ladies performed on San Remo festivals and occasionally even sung same song (as it was tradition at the time that same song was performed in two versions) Milva was a true bel canto belter with a huge voice and her weapon were thunderous ballads where she would unleash that volcanic sound - she rarely sounded subdued and most of the time when you hear Milva its full-blast, fasten-your-seatbels kind of roar. Claudio Villa who is italian God of romantic music would be her only male counterpart and in fact they actually recorded for the same recording company "Cetra records". Her music idol was Edith Piaf and not surprisingly Milva covered Piaf a lot, even recorded the whole tribute album with her songs titled "Canzoni di Edith Piaf".

My favorite Milva period were 1960s - there is so much beautiful music recorded during that period that it looks like never-ending adventure just to browse that huge discography, albums, singles, festival performances, movie soundtracks, you name it, Milva was there. If at the same time Mina was doing twist and singing "Tintarella di Luna", Milva was singing highly dramatical bombastic repertoire like "Flamenco Rock", "Il mare nel cassetto" and "Tango italiano" that sound excellent even today, don't know how anybody can resist such powerful, theatrical interpretations - Ennio Morricone apparently admired her so much that he composed galloping "Quattro vestiti" for her and later even dedicated the complete album to her ("Dedicato A Milva Da Ennio Morricone"). 

Usual comparisons with Mina are truly unnecessary - if you ask me,Milva had much better, stronger voice colored with particular, recognizable sound of old red wine, wonderful and sensuous deep alto that knocks me off my feet every time I hear it. Strangely enough it seems that this particular kind of singing actually fell out of fashion at certain point because italians started to look up to US rock music and suddenly they all sounded hoarse, what Milva does is a particulary old-fashioned art of bel canto singing that not many people can follow unless they are trained.Not surprisingly in 1970s she branched into theater and Brecht repertoire, than moved to Germany where she achieved great success, got herself new audience and works in Italy only sporadically. There are interesting album collaborations with composers like Mikis Theodorakis, Enzo Jannacci, Vangelis, Franco Battiato, Thanos Mikroutsikos, Shinji Tanimura and Giovanni Nuti that shows how serious pop composers hold her in a high esteem - however the most successful collaboration is probably the one with accordion wizard Astor Piazzolla because her passionate style of singing is really best suited to Tango. 

I am enjoying her 1960s work so much that I am basically still stuck there - eventually I might move forward and hear some recent albums but so far I am perfectly happy with that spectacular music legacy. Strangely enough, in italian music shops her work is not easy to find, for some reason there is always just occasional compilation or two (usually always 1960s) but in fact lady has around 70 albums in her discography - Mina and Ornella are far better presented because their albums are carefully re-released while Milva (who is the most powerful singer of the trio) seems to have fell out of fashion. Not for me though, I think she has one of the best voices I have ever heard.