Addio, Milva

Sad news - Italian singer Milva have died this weekend and with her gone, this is now a twilight of the Gods. Some time ago I wrote about her being - along with Mina and Ornella Vanoni - one of the three main female cornerstones of Italian pop music. All three completely different, respectful to each other and incredibly successful in their own right. Inevitably, listener is moved to compare them but they are genuinely excellent artists worth listening and had carved their own signature.

All three had to go trough typical Italian showbiz route - big festivals, San Remo, TV entertainment shows - before they established themselves and became brands. If Ornella was a tender crooner and Mina a weary, sophisticated lady, Milva was a theatrical red haired volcano, gifted with a spectacularly resonant voice - judged by the merit of the voice only, she might technically be the best singer of all three. Hers was a voice that happens once in a century, a deep contralto that has nothing to do with American rock music and everything with old Bel Canto school of singing (I am sure she must have been trained as a singer) and this might be one the reasons why at certain point in 1970s she became restless and started exploring other music directions - theatre, Bertold Brecht, Tango, Ennio Morricone, etc - before moving on to German and French market. Eventually, Germany, France and Italy all honoured her with national awards - I am talking about knighthoods and Order of Merit. 

Hers is a delightfully eclectic discography that goes all over the map - as expected, 1960s were all about big, Italian ballads and bombastic San Remo numbers but later she gets really interesting and there is a certain willingness to experiment and artistic curiosity that is almost unique amongst big stars who tend to set in their own ways. The sheer amount of the records means that I am always stuck somewhere in the 1960s but actually the older she got, her repertoire got better and more varied. Although she stayed a big concert attraction for the long time, it seems that recording-wise she fell out of fashion at certain point (the destiny of many music veterans) and I remember that browsing trough Italian music shops, I could hardly find her albums - which is strange, considering how big and important she once was. Right now Italian media is praising her to the skies but I feel its a bit too late, she was fairly forgotten in the recent years. Curiously, one of the last pictures published on her Facebook page was the one where lady gets her vaccine, with a message "I get vaccinated because I care about my life and other people's lives. Do it too. We need to get back to life before, and hug our loved ones. Together we can all manage to defeat this virus."  Sadly, she passed soon afterwards but left a beautiful afterglow behind her. I will always love her.