Not unlike Cilla Black who is known to young audience only as a familiar TV presenter, Orietta Berti was once a successful pop singer with quite impressive record sales but today she is hardly remembered and even than the cloud of notoriety hovers over her music. You see, Berti had at certain point turned to children's songs and traditional Italian folk music - these recordings sold in huge quantities and almost erased anything that came before. When talking to my Italian friends, they all dismiss her as bad taste and something infantile. This didn't influence my curiosity as I kind of liked her albums with traditional folk so his CD Box with anthology of her decade on "Polydor" was something right up my alley.
It turned out very enjoyable. Kids today would be shocked to find out that music in previous decades was actually based on voice and not on things like choreography and image. People loved the voices they heard on the radio and so talents like Ella Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf and Frank Sinatra were nurtured despite the fact that they didn't do cartwheels on stage - they had voices instead. Orietta Berti was a chubby, cute girl-next-door with incredibly pretty voice and her success was based on it. Where others were perhaps more sophisticated or knowingly sexy, hers image was all about innocence and tenderness that comes across as genuine because who else but good catholic girl would record Soeur Sourire’s "Dominique-nique-nique" and get away with it.
Over the five CDs collected here we follow Berti's work on "Polydor" and how she tentatively found her sound - if the start is little shaky & overtly romantic, later she got over covers and got herself original material by strong composers. At certain points there are really hits galore and everything becomes very enjoyable, it is extremely melodic Italian pop easy to listen and sing along - if Berti lacked rough edges and anguish so beloved by Italians today (everybody seems to purposely avoid sounding pretty) her weapon was naturally sensitive and melodic voice that works extremely well, give her strong refrain and she flies. First four CDs cover her singles and EP recordings, while CD five is complete LP album from 1976. with Gypsy music - it is very ambitious in scope, collecting songs from all over the world but is not very convincing because she sounds too darn pretty for this kind of music (paradox perhaps but it needs a bite). Who knows what Berti does today and how local audience remembers her, this anthology however serves well as a reminder of how it was once done.
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