Lingua inglese - Low politics

4Italy’s festival of syrupy songs loses high ratings to low politics

Twelve million viewers and an audience share of 40 percent sounds pretty good, but the producers of Italy’s celebrated Sanremo song festival were fighting off the “flop” word this week when their opening show was watched by fewer people than last year. A national obsession, Sanremo remains, however, Italy's chirruping harbinger of spring. This year the actress Sharon Stone is the chief guest, flying 22 hours with husband and sizeable staff to make a five-minute appearance for which she will reportedly receive Euro 250,000 (£170,000).

Is the problem the hoary formula of syrupy love songs alternating with vapid celebrity chatter before shimmering sets? Sanremo, after all, is in its 53rd year, and was the only begetter of the Eurovision Song Contest. If you traced the word “Eurotrash” to its source, you would probably find yourself in Sanremo in 1951. But that’s not it: Italian television audiences can’t get enough of this sort of stuff. It goes down well along with a variety of home-produced and South American soap operas, a glut of football (more commentary than matches), and endless arrays of dancing girls on the nightly variety shows.

As usual in Italy, politics is not far away. But this year no holds are barred, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, who is popularly believed to be deliberately undermining RAI to benefit his own Mediaset channels, has scheduled equally luscious eye candy to run head to head, taking millions of Sanremo's ratings.

Sanremo’s incredible ratings – reaching a peak of 17.5 million viewers in 2000 – were the result of a cosy pact between RAI, the state broadcaster which has always staged the festival, and the commercial channels, which put on shows of minority interest during the Sanremo week allowing RAI to fill its boots.

Peter Gabriel gave a brief anti-war oration, following in a tradition at the festival that has seen the likes of actor Roberto Benigni, Bono and The Edge, and Mikhail Gorbachev appeal to the audience's higher feelings.

And the music? Not much to shout about so far. But the singers have a lot to live up to. It was at this festival many years ago that Dusty Springfield heard Pino Donaggio sing the great ballad that became, in her hands, the mammoth hit, "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me". The stuff of history.

The Independent, March 7, 2003

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