"Being called the queen of song? This fact has always amused me. Especially because I have never felt like a queen, but always and only a singer."
It is with Nilla Pizzi, perhaps the first Italian rock star when rock stars did not yet exist, told by Martina Stella that the sixth season of Illuminate opens, the docuseries dedicated to the exemplary women of the Italian twentieth century, premiering on TV from Sunday 25 February in the late evening on Rai3.
Produced by Gloria Giorgianni for Anele in collaboration with Rai Cultura, the series is a journey in four episodes for as many portraits of Made in Italy excellence, guided by four actress-narrators in a story that combines cinematic narration, archive materials and testimonies direct.
We start with Carla Signoris (in the second appointment) who dreams of reliving a "special day" in Monica Vitti's life, 3 May 1988, when Le Monde published the incorrect news of her disappearance.
To Anna Ferzetti, who instead plays the exemplary figure of the first and only screenwriter of the golden years of Italian cinema, Suso Cecchi D'Amico, in the docu-film which brings her artistic baptism to the screen, when in 1946 she wrote her first film, Avatar.
And then Euridice Axen who embarks on an unexpected journey through the history of Italy from the 1930s to today through the eyes of the Fontana Sisters - Zoe, Micol and Giovanna - three young Emilian seamstresses who created dresses with a unique and disruptive style, coveted and worn by the most important women in the world, leaving a legacy of a modern vision of fashion and femininity.
The first episode, however, is all about Martina Stella and her "meeting" with Nilla Pizzi (1919-2011).
Invited as a guest at the Nilla Pizzi Prize, established in honor of the singer and dedicated to those who are capable of renewing art and culture, the actress leaves for Sant'Agata Bolognese (BO), Pizzi's home town, and discovers a The artist who was not only the first overall winner of the Sanremo Festival in 1951, but also an extremely modern and contemporary woman.
It all began for her with a beauty contest and an audition at Eiar, which her sister secretly enrolled her in.
It was a meteoric career, thanks also to that voice naturally full of pathos, so much so that, as the citric Enzo Giannelli says, "between '47 and '51, before going to Sanremo, he had already recorded 50 records of which at least 45 successes".
From Mamma, to Grazie dei Fiori, Vola colomba, Papaveri e papere to Non sono ordini, the last song recorded shortly before dying and released a few days ago on streaming platforms, for Nilla Pizzi "the first fanclub that ever existed was also born for an Italian singer, Il salottino di Nilla", says one of her first fans and dear friend Matteo Scircoli.
And there were also the CartoNille,
facsimile of the postcards on which his images were pasted to exchange Christmas greetings or communications about his concerts.
Above all, Nilla Pizzi was a free woman, also in love, she traveled the world, opened a restaurant in Acapulco where Frank Sinatra was often a guest, and lived a truly intense life.
Among the testimonies collected, also that of his niece Maura Fantuzzi and then Mauro Coruzzi, Pino Strabioli, the manager Elia Faustini, the director of the Teatro Comunale Ferdinando Bibiena of Sant'Agata Bolognese Romeo Grosso, the journalist and radio speaker Massimo Cotto, the singer-songwriter Greta Zuccoli.
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