Ornella Vanoni

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Geburt:: 22.09.1934
Tot:: 21.11.2025
Friedhof:: Geben Sie den Friedhof

Ornella Vanoni OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [orˈnɛlla vaˈnoːni]; 22 September 1934 – 21 November 2025) was an Italian singer and songwriter. With a career spanning almost seventy years, she was one of the Italy's longest-standing musical artists. During her long career, she released about 121 works between LP, EPs and greatest hits albums, and sold over 65 million records, being considered one of the most popular interpreters of Italian pop music.

Artistic career

Vanoni started her artistic career in 1960 as a theatre actress. She mostly performed in Bertolt Brecht works, under the direction of Giorgio Strehler at his Piccolo Teatro in her native city of Milan. At the same time, she started a music career. The folklore and popular songs she explored in her early records, especially the ones about the criminal underworld in Milan (Canzoni della Mala), resulted in her receiving the nickname cantante della mala ("Underworld Singer") for singing Milanese dialect songs on that genre.

Vanoni scored two major hits in 1963 with "Senza fine" and "Che cosa c'è", both written for her by Gino Paoli. In 1964 she won the Festival of Neapolitan song with "Tu si na cosa grande". In the following years, she took part in a series of Festivals of Italian song in Sanremo with the songs "Abbracciami forte" (1965), "Io ti darò di più" (1966), "La musica è finita" (1967), "Casa Bianca" (1968), and "Eternità" (1970). "Casa Bianca", which finished second in 1968, was the subject of a copyright dispute between the composer of the song, Don Backy, and the Clan Celentano label.

In the late 1960s, Vanoni recorded "Una ragione di più", "Un'ora sola ti vorrei", "L'appuntamento" (a cover of the Brazilian song "Sentado à beira do caminho" by Erasmo Carlos and Roberto Carlos) and "Non dirmi niente", a cover of Burt Bacharach's "Don't Make Me Over". In 1972 she sang "Quei giorni insieme a te", the theme from Lucio Fulci's critically acclaimed mystery thriller film Don't Torture a Duckling.

In 1976, Vanoni collaborated with Vinicius de Moraes and Toquinho on the album La voglia, la pazzia, l'incoscienza, l'allegria, best remembered for its title track "La voglia, la pazzia". During the 1980s, she released "Ricetta di donna", "Uomini", and "Ti lascio una canzone" (with Gino Paoli). In 1989, she returned to the Sanremo Music Festival with the song "Io come farò". In 1999, she recorded "Alberi", a duet with Enzo Gragnaniello. In 2004 she released an album of duets with Paoli to celebrate her 70th birthday.

In addition to her music career, Vanoni was active in other creative fields, starring in stage and in television shows and movies. In January 1977 she posed nude for the Italian edition of Playboy magazine and requested a statuette by her long time friend the artist Arnaldo Pomodoro as payment. The inclusion of her song "L'appuntamento" (1970) on the soundtrack of Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Twelve in 2004 sparked a worldwide renewal of interest in her music. The soundtrack of the Danish film Toscana (2022, Netflix) also featured the song.

Personal life and death

Vanoni was a Protestant. In June 2025, she received an honorary degree in "Music, Culture, Media and Performance" from the University of Milan.

Vamoni died of a heart attack at her home in Milan, in the late hours of 21 November 2025, at the age of 91. Her body was exposed at Piccolo Teatro in Milan, where she started her career.