SANREMO MUSIC FESTIVAL 2023 BEGINS TODAY
Discover with us the history and curiosities of this event, part of the Italian culture!
Sanremo Music Festival 2023 begins today, Italian song festival of Sanremo, now at the 73rd edition of its long history.
The Festival is one of the most important events of Italian culture and is closely connected to the city of SANREMO, the city of flowers!
SANREMO
Sanremo is a renowned tourist resort in the Liguria region known for its climate, its breathtaking coastline and for the cultivation of flowers which give this area the name of “Riviera dei Fiori”.
Developed in Roman times and mainly dedicated to trade by sea, it saw development in tourist and residential terms at the end of the nineteenth century: rich and noble from northern Europe and Russia began to choose Sanremo for “wintering”, paving the way for elite tourism of the Russian nobility, attracted by the mild climate and the beauty of the places. To encourage the growth of tourism in that period, admirable buildings and villas were built such as the famous Casino, inaugurated in 1905.
Among the many who chose Sanremo we remember the Empress Elisabeth of Bavaria (Sissi, Empress of Austria) and the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, creator and founder of the Nobel Prize who died in its Villa in Sanremo.
THE FESTIVAL
The Sanremo Festival was born to encourage tourism in the low season, creating an event of a musical nature.
The first edition of the Italian song festival was held on January 29 1951 in the party hall of the Casino of Sanremo, where the spectators dined seated at tables while the three singers in the competition performed.
The editions up to 1954 were broadcast on the radio but, thanks to the increase in interest around the festival, starting from the 1955 edition it was broadcast in Eurovision by Raiuno, the national network.
In 1977, in addition to its debut on color television, the Festival moved to its new home, the Ariston theater, in the heart of the city along Corso Matteotti where we also find curious bronze plaques engraved with the artist’s name and the title of the winning song of each edition.
So it was therefore that the Sanremo Festival became much more than a singing event: from the period after the Second World War, an era of reconstruction and relaunch for the economy, the Festival accompanies Italian history and is a mirror of our society, an interval pop in continuous transformation that has been able to change and adapt to society and times, passing from the first winning song, “Grazie dei fiori” interpreted by Nilla Pizzi, to the many, iconic, faces of Italian music that passed from the Sanremo stage that marked an era: Domenico Modugno with the most famous Italian song, “Nel blu dipinto di blu“, also known as “Volare” who entered the history of music with his melody; Mina with his “Mille bolle blu”, Little Tony and Adriano Celentano with “24000 baci ” and then Gino Paoli, Lucio Dalla and Lucio Battisti, up to the Maneskin, which global success has began with the winning of the 2021 Festival edition (and later Eurovision).
The musical event is scheduled from February 7 to 11 2023 at the Ariston theater in Sanremo, broadcast live on the national Raiuno network and streaming on Raiplay, with the popular face of Italian TV Amadeus as conductor. The Ariston stage will see, in addition to the twenty-eight singers in the competition, many guests starting with the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Italian Constitution together with the Oscar winner Roberto Benigni, and many international personalities such as the Maneskin (winners in 2021), the Black Eyed Pease and Depeche Mode.
Everything is ready, let the curtain rise on the 73rd edition of the Sanremo Festival!