Gabriella Ferri's career was one of the richest and most varied in Italian music, even though many remember her only as the great interpreter of dialect songs. Let's retrace her story, trying to move past the clichés that still surround one of the most extraordinary figures produced by the world of entertainment
Ten years have passed since the death of Gabriella Ferri. On April 3, 2004, the singer fell from the balcony of the house where she had withdrawn, in Corchiano. Although her relatives were keen to point out that her mood had lately been improving, and although no farewell note was ever found, many remain convinced that Gabriella took her own life. We will never know the truth, and in the end it would only be of use to the odd TV journalist and the hypocritical hagiographies that tend to follow.
What should matter to anyone who follows music is what Gabriella Ferri achieved in her lifetime. Her legacy represents an essential slice of recent Italian culture and deserves to be remembered far more often, especially by those within the industry. While the press has canonized many of the great names of Italian music who died over the past twenty years, Gabriella's work is recalled far less frequently than that of others.
A paradox, given that she was the most dazzling star Italian folk ever produced. A folk tradition she turned into a sprawling, Pantagruelian creature: not just Rome, but Naples too; not just music, but theatre as well; not just the age-old charm of the common people, but a refined work of musical research, almost anthropological in value. Not merely an interpreter, but a creative mind in her own right: she was in fact one of the first women in Italy to write and credit her own songs, which she performed alongside the great classics of tradition. Last but not least, her passion for Latin music, which allowed for cross-pollinations never quite replicated elsewhere in Italy. But let's start from the beginning.
Gabriella was born on September 18, 1942 in Testaccio, a Roman district once famous for its large slaughterhouse, closed down in 1975. She was no ordinary girl from a working-class neighbourhood, though. She soon grew restless, largely because of her relationship with her father. Mr. Vittorio – a street vendor with artistic ambitions – opened the door to music for her on one hand, passing on much of the traditional Roman repertoire, while on the other his domineering ways unwittingly drove her away from home.
Gabriella, however, never truly severed herself from her father figure, whom she always considered central to her life despite their fraught relationship and long periods of estrangement. Indeed, she often took the lyrics her father enjoyed writing and, after suitably adapting them, set them to music.
Having left her family home, she worked in a shop near Piazza del Popolo, where in 1963 she met Luisa De Santis, daughter of the director Giuseppe, one of the leading figures of Neorealism. The two women hit it off at once: Luisa was well versed in the popular repertoire her father had always explored and used in his own films. Before long they found themselves singing songs in Roman dialect in unison.
A year later they decided to move to Milan, where thanks to De Santis's connections they found support in intellectual circles. Their big break came when an enthusiastic Enzo Jannacci managed to get them a performance at the Intra's Derby Club. There they caught the attention of record producer Walter Guertler, who signed them to Jolly, and of Mike Bongiorno, who invited them onto the show "La fiera dei sogni", where they sang "La società dei magnaccioni". That was Gabriella Ferri's first contact with a mass audience and with television.
There is, in any case, a myth worth debunking here: many sources, from the Corriere della Sera archive to RAI documentaries, report that following that appearance the single "La società dei magnaccioni" sold one million seven hundred thousand copies. That figure is absurd, utterly unreal, and nobody knows where it came from or how. In fact, the song never even cracked the top eight of any of the various Italian charts of the period.
There are also old articles mentioning twelve thousand copies sold in a month, a far more plausible figure, which confirms that Italian folk in the early Sixties still wasn't a big draw.
The partnership with Luisa, however, lasts only a couple of years. The young De Santis finds a career as a musician stressful, and the duo splits without drama after a handful of singles.
More determined than ever in her mission, the girl from Testaccio then records her debut album, Gabriella Ferri (1966). Twelve songs, five of which were recorded together with Luisa before the split, and a cover that curiously anticipates that of Blue by Joni Mitchell.
Three tracks come from the repertoire of Romolo Balzani, a Roman singer and songwriter famous in the Thirties: “Er carrettiere a vino”, “L'eco der core” and “Barcarolo romano” (the latter in particular needs no introduction, it would be like trying to explain “O sole mio” to someone).
Already evident, albeit still in rough form, is the interplay of contrasts that would make the artist famous: the verses are tense, with the guitar strings trilling frantically, generating an atmosphere of uncertainty and suspension, while the choruses are liberating and full of passion. These shifts in mood and tone are just the first examples of a singing style with few equals in the world, and practically none in Italy. In the years to come they would be pushed to the extreme and warped into grotesque masks.
“Le mantellate” tells of the feelings of a female prisoner, a subject very close to Ferri's heart and one she would return to many times over her career. Written in 1959 by Giorgio Strehler and Fiorenzo Carpi, and originally performed by Ornella Vanoni, it's only in this new version that it fully expresses its power: the spartan but evocative arrangement for guitar and electric organ, the incredible voice that moves along downcast, slowly rises, then seems to fade into a whisper and suddenly surges, turning hoarse and roaring.
It's a song whose references are anything but immediate for a non-Roman, just consider the opening line: “Le mantellate so' delle sore, ma a Roma so' soltanto celle scure” (while elsewhere in Italy “mantellate” refers to the religious order of that name, for Romans the word denotes one of the avenues running alongside Regina Coeli prison). Nevertheless, the sense of loneliness and oppression it describes is universal, especially in the finale, underscored by the heavy use of echo: “Ma Cristo nun ce sta drento a 'ste mura, mo' che parlate a fa', mo' che parlate a fa', qua drento ce sta solo infamità”.
As many as six tracks are credited to Gabriella. It should be noted, however, that Jolly would sometimes put its artists' names on traditional songs with no credited author, a trick that allowed for higher earnings through publishing rights. It's therefore not easy to establish where, and to what extent, the singer's own pen actually contributed to this debut album.
This category, incidentally, includes some of the best tracks, such as “Vola vola l'aritornello”, with its ancient, almost gothic flavor, and the wild “Aritornelli antichi”, where one might suspect a connection to Sicilian folk, given the almost Arabic-sounding chant of the verse. Listening to it back to back with Rosa Balistreri's “Buttana di to mà”, the comparison comes naturally.
The most remembered title, however, is “Te possino da' tante cortellate”. A stream of vitriol, rage spewed without any restraint, with that picturesque flair of which only folk art is capable: “Er bene che te vojo nun lo dico, te vorebbe vede' a ponte impiccato, con la testa mozzata e pe Panìco” (literally “rolling down Via di Panico”, a Roman street at the start of which public executions were once held). It was recently brought back into the spotlight by a well-known comic book artist.
Unfortunately, despite the many memorable moments, the album fails to achieve significant sales, not even two years later when it's reissued under the title “Roma mia bella”.
While the record with its original artwork and track listing is out of print, its songs have often found space on low-price compilations. The best is probably The Best of Gabriella Ferri (Saar Records, 2005), which contains it in full, along with eight further songs from the period with Luisa, at least a couple of which are of great significance.
One is “Sinnò me moro”, written by Carlo Rustichelli and Pietro Germi in 1959, recorded by Alida Chelli and originally placed at the opening of the film “Un maledetto imbroglio”. Ferri's version is quite respectful of the already extraordinary original, even though the arrangement is more strictly folk and her vocal delivery again carries something of an Eastern flavor.
The other is “Alla renella”, a traditional song from the late eighteenth century, which again tells of the sufferings of a prisoner. The “renella” is the sandy bank that used to form on the banks of the Tiber during low water (a phenomenon that later disappeared after the construction of stone embankments), and in the lyrics it's used as a metaphor to mourn the distance from one's beloved. The accompaniment is led by a Spanish-sounding guitar, proof of the hybrid nature of Italian folk music, but above all a hint of what would, within a few years, become one of Gabriella's greatest passions: Latin folk.
After touring Canada and the United States in the summer of 1966 with the show "Folkitalia" (alongside Caterina Bueno, Otello Profazio and Matteo Salvatore), Gabriella returns to Rome. During this period she frequents the Rosati bar, one of the city's trendiest spots, where she meets established artists such as Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi, as well as a young Renzo Arbore, who had just arrived in the capital. The future TV host gets her hooked on the Neapolitan repertoire, which will end up taking up a substantial part of her songbook.
Towards the end of the year she makes her debut at the Bagaglino, the theatrical company founded the previous year by Pier Francesco Pingitore and Mario Castellacci. It's through this experience that Gabriella begins to develop her trademark theatrical, clownish flair.
1967 is essentially a blank year in her career, taken up by a messy, short-lived marriage. The contract with RCA comes in 1968: the first fruit of it is a 7-inch single, featuring "È scesa ormai la sera" on the A-side (a rather lightweight track, barely distinguishable from the most formulaic Italian pop) and a markedly more solid "Ti regalo gli occhi miei" on the B-side. Here arranger Piero Pintucci works on a dark, driving orchestral progression, softened only in the chorus by the airy choir of Alessandroni's Cantori Moderni. Sales are once again nowhere to be found.
At the start of 1969 she takes part in Sanremo with "Se tu ragazzo mio", a track blending rhythm and blues, folk and baroque arrangements. Playing harmonica from behind the scenes is a very young Stevie Wonder, who then comes on stage to perform his own version of the song, in extremely halting Italian. It's yet another flop: the song is eliminated immediately and doesn't chart at all.
But just when all seems lost, the unthinkable happens. Gabriella records "Te regalo yo mis ojos", the Spanish-language version of "Ti regalo gli occhi miei", to launch it on the South American market.
It's not entirely clear why the record executives believed that a song which had gone completely unnoticed in Italy could work abroad, especially considering the singer was racking up one flop after another. But for some strange reason the gamble pays off: the song becomes a massive hit, selling over a million copies in a matter of months across Argentina, Venezuela and Chile.
It's an enormous success, prompting the singer to embark on a tour of those countries, where she is met by huge crowds. It's amusing to think that today Gabriella Ferri is remembered as an artist of dialect song, and therefore tied strictly to her own nation, when on a large scale she was in fact first appreciated on the other side of the ocean and the equator.
"Te regalo yo mis ojos" is a masterpiece (the Spanish lyrics sound markedly more poetic than the original version), as well as arguably the best-selling single of 1969 by an Italian artist. In those countries it later became a standard, and to this day counts countless cover versions.
Back in Italy, she resumes acting with the Bagaglino and finally records her second album, also self-titled. The three already-known RCA tracks make the cut, along with a couple of covers and seven new songs co-written by her father and by an unknown Vittorio Nocenzi, not yet a member of Banco del Mutuo Soccorso.
Not everything hits the mark: pleasant as it is, "E niente" leans too heavily on the rhythm and blues element, which tends to flatten the singer's expressiveness, while "I Close My Eyes" is a vignette of psychedelic folk-pop sung in English, completely out of place.
What's interesting, in any case, are the successful tracks. "La luna è lontana" is a breathtaking ballad, whose choral crescendo, angelic in tone, represents a career pinnacle for Pintucci. "Sor Fregnone" is an orchestral march with a harrowing, subtly ambiguous lyric (it's unclear whether the protagonist is a young man suffering for love, a prisoner, or something else): "Che te fischi a sor Fregnone, statte zitto abbi rispetto, che la sera drento al letto tu ce l'hai chi te vo' bene, io c'ho solo 'sti vent'anni, come fossero un dispetto, me li sento sulla schiena, io con loro vado a letto".
"Sinnò me moro" returns, this time with a futuristic arrangement by Paolo Ormi, miles away from the previous one: exotic percussion, electric organ and jazzy piano flourishes.
But it's with "Ciccio Formaggio", her first encounter with the classic Neapolitan songbook, that Gabriella's genius truly explodes. Originally written by Gigi Pisano and Giuseppe Cioffi, it became Nino Taranto's signature song, which he first performed on stage in 1940 and went on to record several times over the years (the first time in 1950). In his version, "Ciccio Formaggio" was a comic number with a cheeky little tune and a hapless protagonist, constantly mistreated by his girlfriend and unable to stand up for himself.
Gabriella turns it upside down: the lyrics are left intact, but they’re the only element that stays faithful to the original. The brisk pace has become painfully slow, the mocking tone has become desperate. Poor Ciccio suffers terribly from the abuses of his Luisa, a feeling further underlined by the arrangement, which strips away the original’s orchestra and leaves only guitar and a wailing violin, closing on an almost dissonant note.
The album doesn’t sell as well as hoped, but buoyed by the South American success of the previous year, RCA now has faith in the artist, who begins appearing on television with some regularity.
This is the first album to achieve even a modest chart entry. The arrangements are by Giacomo Simonelli, who that same year composed the entire debut album of Balletto di Bronzo, “Sirio 2222”.
The tracklist features superb new recordings of songs already tackled for Jolly (“Alla renella”, “Barcarolo romano”, “La società dei magnaccioni”), but also classics given tribute for the first time, like the evocative tango “Chitarra romana”, from the repertoire of Carlo Buti (perhaps the defining voice of 1930s Italy), as well as the widely known “Tanto pe’ cantà” by Ettore Petrolini, with a notably embellished melody.
There are also several previously unreleased songs, penned by the Bagaglino crowd (Castellacci, Pingitore, composer Dimitri Gribanovski, and Ferri herself). “Er cortelluccio” alternates dance-hall breaks with dramatic violin slowdowns, as the songwriter narrates an unfortunate relationship that ends with the violent death of the turbulent beloved: “T’ho visto morto sui serci de Panìco, longo spianato come la gelata”. “Notte serena” has a verse that edges close to lounge music (percussion, vibraphone, flute) and a chorus with a march-like gait. Decidedly sparer, but incredibly intense, “Tu non me piaci più” is one of those rare moments in which Gabriella’s voice is accompanied by nothing but piano. It shows how, had she wanted to, she could easily have taken on a jazz-oriented repertoire as well.
Dedicated entirely to the Neapolitan tradition, this is the first of four albums arranged by the De Angelis brothers, better known to most as Oliver Onions.
It’s not easy for a non-Neapolitan singer to take on this repertoire and come out with head held high, but Gabriella pulls off that feat too. Her pronunciation isn’t always perfect, but her personality, theatricality and passion are such that before long the city beneath Vesuvius would passionately identify with the singer’s work, and the rest of Italy with Naples.
The intimate, restrained rendition of “’O sole mio”, a duet with Pippo Franco, is an immediate sign of an album that tackles major songs while trying to avoid a textbook approach. “Come facette mammeta” is made even more playful by off-the-cuff spoken asides inserted between the classic verses. While many of the tracklist’s songs, from “Reginella” to “Marechiare”, are so famous they transcend any single performer, with no version standing out as definitively the best, there’s one title that Gabriella managed to pull off the miracle of making her own. That, of course, is “Dove sta Zazà”.
The story tells of a man named Isaia, who loses his girlfriend Zazà in the crowd at the Feast of San Gennaro and can no longer find her. The following year, during the same festival, he decides to make up for it by seducing Zazà’s sister.
If the version that made the song popular, recorded by Nino Taranto in 1946, was particularly fast and comic in tone (complete with the performer’s complaints to the conductor, accused of playing too quickly), Gabriella turns it into an emotional rollercoaster. It begins slow and anguished, then shatters into a series of sudden jolts and stops, while her voice seems to brush against tears one moment and turn tar-black the next. Raffaele Cutolo himself, the song’s author, would certify it as the best version he’d ever heard.
There’s also room in the tracklist for a non-Neapolitan song, “In cerca di te”, which, sung by Nella Colombo in 1945, became one of the greatest hits of Italian jazz. The tempo is similar to the original, but in place of Colombo’s clear, caressing timbre, Gabriella opts for a brash, flashy pronunciation, with wide-open vowels. As for the voracious scat improvised at the end, there’s not much to say, except that Ella Fitzgerald would probably have given it her wholehearted approval.
Slow and steady wins the race: through years of appearances on all kinds of shows, Gabriella’s music had slowly gotten under the skin of the Italian public, and the moment finally arrives when our heroine stops being “the one who sings popular songs on TV” and becomes the one whose “new record is out, let’s go buy it”.
The spark that ignites it all is probably her appearance, orchestrated by Renato Rascel on “Senza rete”, where the singer lets loose in a blazing live performance of a 1920s polka, “Rosamunda”. Her voice, more roaring than ever and delivered at full lung capacity, stuns the studio audience, who reward her with a triumphant round of applause.
This would become the standout track of an album that, democratically split between Roman and Neapolitan repertoire, quickly climbs to number two on the charts and propels Ferri into the pantheon of Italian entertainment.
Considerable fame also comes from “La pansè”, again drawn from the songbook of Gigi Pisano and previously brought to prominence by Renato Carosone. The track is pushed into a constant acceleration, with verses declaimed in a voice so absurd that at one point an involuntary laugh slips out: thank goodness it wasn't cut (assuming it really was involuntary — with a performer this theatrical, you can never be sure).
“La Luna”, by contrast, is little known — a gem that deserves wide-scale rediscovery. While the introduction to Beethoven's “Moonlight Sonata” repeats ad libitum, two vocal lines — one ethereal, the other deeper — overlap, insisting, with different words, on how pale and uninhabited the Moon is. It's an impalpable, deeply sad piece that, in structure and arrangement, truly has no parallel in Italian pop of the era.
In the summer of 1973, Bagaglino lands its first-ever show on Rai. It's called “Dove sta Zazà” and airs on Saturdays. The show, directed by the veteran director Antonello Falqui, features Gabriella Ferri as its central figure, acting as both host and singer, backed by comic sketches from Pippo Franco, Enrico Montesano, Oreste Lionello and Pino Caruso, as well as notable guests such as the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare and Claudio Villa (their stornello duel is hilarious).
Finally, the wider public gets to experience Gabriella's art in full, whereas up to that point only Romans had been able to appreciate her gifts as a performer and cabaret artist. The visual element is essential here, not least because it brings out one of the most important and underrated aspects of the Ferri persona: sexual ambiguity. It's not hard to notice, in fact, how many of Gabriella's songs, among those drawn from the popular repertoire, were sung from a male perspective, without altering the lyrics, even when they were love songs. While this device was common among other folk singers of the period, Gabriella was nonetheless the only one to put it into practice so thoroughly, often appearing on stage in male makeup and clothing.
“Dove sta Zazà” is a memorable show, featuring footage that has gone down in the history of Italian television, such as the segment for the title track, with Gabriella lost in a maze of elevated roads on the outskirts of a metropolis, or the one for “Ciccio Formaggio”, where we find her wearing a Petrolini-style mask, wandering disconsolately through a rubbish dump. Watching them, it's easy to understand Federico Fellini's praise: they could well be clips from his most surreal films, featuring a character adorned in excess, moving through a decaying space and generating a nauseating sense of decay.
The closing theme is credited to Castellacci alongside maestro Franco Pisano, and is titled “Sempre”. Released as a 45, it reaches number one on the charts and drags the eponymous album to the top with it, making it one of the bestsellers of 1973.
The melancholy ballad delves deep into the feeling of nostalgia and lost time, featuring some of the most iconic lines in Italian music: “Tu che giuri e giuro anch'io, anche tu amore mio, così certo e così bello, anche tu diventerai come un vecchio ritornello che nessuno canta più”.
The metaphor of the old song being forgotten is doubly memorable because it's put in Gabriella's mouth — an artist whose records were, at that very moment, making a decisive contribution to saving the songs of the people, bringing them back to life and rescuing them from the dust of oblivion.
“Pe' lungotevere” is yet another moving tribute to Balzani; the circus-like rendition of “Io cerco la Titina” springs along to a piano beat and shows occasional touches of synthesizer; “Il valzer della toppa”, written by Pier Paolo Pasolini to music by Piero Umiliani, and recorded by Laura Betti in 1960, stays fairly faithful to the original, albeit decidedly slowed down. The lyrics are one of the finest examples of the world seen through the eyes of a drunk person. “Me so' presa la toppa, e mo so' felice! Me possi cecamme, me sento tornata un fiore de verginità! Verginità! Me sento tutta verginità!”
“'A casciaforte”, an old Neapolitan standard already handled by Carosone and Roberto Murolo, is turned completely inside out: the violin introduces the theme from Liszt's second Hungarian Rhapsody, followed by a sung (or rather, recited) section that moves between polka and waltz, after which Liszt's theme returns and everything descends into chaos. The tempo accelerates to dizzying levels, with the violin screeching madly while all around there are shouts, clashing cymbals, comic sound effects and even fireworks.
The tracks written by Gabriella herself are brilliant too: “Sette par de scarpe… e vado scarzo” opens with yet another classical quotation (Verdi's “La donna è mobile”) before moving between waltz and festival marching-band territory, right up to the epic finale that reprises the popular little tune “Tutti al mare” (showing off bare bottoms, naturally), while “Cara madre mia” is a mournful, intimate dedication, for flamenco guitar and the barest hint of keyboard.
“Se ci vuoi pensar” is, lastly, a sort of two-faced Janus of Italian folk: two minutes of slow-motion poetic lament followed by two minutes of an off-key march complete with a silly little chorus and raspberries blown left and right. Frankly, Italy had never heard music this brazen and irreverent before. Not just because of the choice of sounds and modes of expression, but also because of the words set to them, which hint at a vague sense of blasphemy: “Se ci vuoi pensar, a quel tuo piccolo figlio, che come cicoria e verde di terra nel cuore ti cresce, e in testa rimpiange il mistero di un Dio, che non vuole saperne di esistere, manco se muori in eterno”.
On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile and gagged every form of cultural expression in the country. Five days later, singer-songwriter Víctor Jara was horrifically murdered, along with many other dissidents. Inti Illimani, one of the most renowned groups of that scene, took refuge in Italy, where they would enjoy a period of considerable popularity. Amid this renewed public interest in the events unfolding in Latin America, Gabriella likely found the conviction to tackle the folk repertoire of those lands. She thus devotes the first side of her new album, “Remedios”, to it.
Compared to the Italian repertoire, which she approaches with violence and shamelessness, the singer proves protective toward the Latin classics, reserving for them particularly delicate interpretations.
“La paloma”, a habanera composed by the Spanish author Sebastián Iradier in 1860 during his stay in Cuba, is easily one of the best among the hundreds of existing versions, with the subdued sound of the harmonica providing counterpoint in the chorus and an orchestral backdrop in the finale.
“Cielito lindo”, a mariachi standard written in 1882 by Quirino Mendoza y Cortés, carefully leans into its original sentimental mood, while the other Mexican classic, “La cucaracha”, takes on a far harsher character, performed here with the lyrics rigorously drawn from the revolutionary period (1910-1917).
“La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar, porque no tiene, porque le falta, marihuana que fumar”: the reference is to Victoriano Huerta, the Mexican tyrant with well-known problems of alcohol and drugs, one of the most hated figures in the country's history. Despite its overexposure and the often trivial uses it's put to, “La cucaracha” remains one of the songs that best symbolized a people's rebellion. Gabriella shows herself fully aware of the historical weight of what she is handling, delivering an interpretation of crystalline formal perfection, aided also by the De Angelis brothers' superb arrangement (mariachi horns, percussion, driving piano dynamics).
“La malagueña” comes as a surprise, a song made famous in the postwar years by giants of Mexican music such as Miguel Aceves Mejía and Trío Los Panchos. Characterized in those versions by endless high notes, it is here lowered by several tones and set within an intimate vision for solo guitar.
With “Grazie alla vita” Gabriella shows her hand, translating into Italian the anthem of Violeta Parra, legendary figure of Chilean music, who died by suicide in 1967 after long suffering from depression: although she did not live to see the Pinochet regime, Parra is regarded as the founder of the nueva canción chilena, whose later exponents would confront the dictator in person, paying a heavy price for their courage. For this reason Parra is still seen today as a symbol of hope by the Chilean people, and for this reason tackling her most famous song at that precise historical moment carries a powerful symbolic charge. It is evident in Gabriella's voice that she feels deeply at one with the song, as if in a kind of spiritual connection with its author, whose illness she would later come to share.
The masterpiece of the first side – and one of the high points of Italian music – is however the title track, words and music credited to Ferri, recorded directly in Spanish, as though it were a traditional folk song. The mimicry is perfect: an unrepeatable balance of poetry, melancholy melody and tasteful arrangement, with the warm, full sound of the bass up front. A translation is a must: “Remedios, little darling, young girl, beautiful, sweet, splendid little one, left just like that, sitting by the sea, your hands full of pearls, the sun on your brow and your smile, white orchid, soul and dove, and joy, you sing consolation, you sing hope, you sing Remedios. Your story was once told to us by God, your little brother with his guitar, you had fallen asleep under the moon, you were happy, little Remedios”.
The second side returns to its Roman roots, with no drop in quality: “Semo in centoventitré”, with its boisterous paraponzipò set to an almost ska rhythm, brings back the irreverent performer of the previous albums; “E dormi pupo dorce” is a lullaby of infinite tenderness that moves at the pace of a music box with plucked strings; “Nina si voi dormite”, a Roman classic from 1901 already tackled back at the time of her debut album, shows off a restrained arrangement for guitar and keyboards.
Then there's “Canto de malavita”, which without this recording would probably have been lost forever: a little-known text by an anonymous author, it narrates yet another tale of prison life, with a tone of disillusioned abandonment. Gabriella pairs it with a melody of her own composition, and when in the chorus she cries out in despair “E mo' sto dentro, come te posso amà?”, one senses that, in all likelihood, no postwar voice ever understood Rome as well as this woman did.
The album reaches third place on the charts, confirming this magical moment.
The spell breaks in 1975. Gabriella is back on television for a Bagaglino show titled “Mazzabubù”. Although the eponymous album released at that time – no longer with the backing of the De Angelis brothers – is a solid work, one senses for the first time a record aiming to please the public, with a rather unexciting selection of standards and remarkably little space for the singer's own songwriting, limited to the sole “Vola pensiero mio”. There are nonetheless a couple of moments worth remembering: “Vecchia Roma”, a nostalgic song composed by Mario Ruccione and made popular by Claudio Villa in 1950, here interwoven with piano fragments quoting Glenn Miller's “Moonlight Serenade”, and a harrowing version of “Malafemmena”, with a shouted ending. Naturally, Ferri's catalogue could not go without a song by the great De Curtis, a figure who always held a particular fascination for Gabriella, to the point that she repeatedly confessed: “Vorrei essere Totò” (“I wish I were Totò”).
The show draws large audiences and the album achieves satisfactory sales, though not matching the levels of its three predecessors (it reaches tenth place on the charts). Everything would seem, in essence, to be going swimmingly, but that very year Vittorio Ferri dies and the situation takes a turn for the worse. Gabriella cannot cope with the loss of her father and falls into depression. There is talk of a failed suicide attempt; what is certain is that two sold-out dates at the Sistina were cancelled because the artist did not feel strong enough to face the stage.
In December 1977 she returned to TV with the show “…E adesso andiamo a incominciare”, alongside Luigi Perelli, but the album that followed was a resounding commercial flop. Yet it wasn't bad at all, with the rock band Pandemonium providing backing and some decent sound work from the returning Pintucci. Worth remembering with fondness are the classic brasileiro “Oração de mãe Menininha”, from the songbook of Dorival Caymmi, and “Lasciami sola”, an Italian-language version of “Leave Me Alone”, the lively rhythm and blues number taken to success by Helen Reddy five years earlier.
At this point she took a break – it's not entirely clear whether by choice or necessity – and in 1981 released the album Gabriella, largely written by Paolo Conte. The singer, however, was ill-suited to the slightly chilly style of the songwriter from Asti, as well as to the sounds chosen for the occasion by Pintucci, which lean a little too heavily on certain Eighties clichés.
Having moved to the United States, she returned in 1987 with the release of Nostalgia. The lead single, “Er Zelletta”, is a tender tale about the loss of virginity, but it sounds somewhat out of step with the times, as does the rest of the record. During this period she also sang the theme song for the show “Biberon”, which marked the comeback of Bagaglino. The track is carried along by cold, plastic-sounding production, but there's something genuinely moving about seeing Gabriella back on stage. All the more so since, after that appearance, she retired from the scene.
She would only return with a couple of negligible works in the late Nineties, and on television only for the odd sporadic appearance (worth recalling is a fine interview with Gianni Minà in 1997).
The final act of the play is, sadly, well known. All we can do now is hope her memory stays alive for a long time: a model like hers would do nothing but good for an Italian music scene that has rarely looked more lifeless. Talent, passion, originality, a deep knowledge of her own roots, a spirit of contamination and genuine nonconformity, utterly free of any chic posturing. For anyone interested, and forgive the clumsy infomercial tone, all her records can still be found at very affordable prices, around five euros.
