«MI would be attached to the tail of a freight train, that’s my dream at sixteen. I wanted freedom, adventure. The idea of having a full diary, or signing a three-year contract, scared me: I saw them as limits.” Yet at sixteen, that is Gigliola Cinquetti, 75 years old, wins the Sanremo Festival with I’m not old enough, the song with which she also won at Eurovision, in Copenhagen: she was the first Italian to do so and it was 1964, two years later she did a double in Sanremo with Dio, come ti amo. In short, nothing more than agendas and contracts to avoid. Her dream – of course – will change.
And he tells us about it, almost sixty years from that day, in Sometimes you dream (Rizzoli), a book where he retraces his life through memories and details like the one in the title: it’s 2022 and he’s at the Eurovision in Turin as a guest; she remembers the years in which she won it, the same ones in which she used to practice “the art of napping on three chairs”.
From Sanremo to… Gigliola Cinquetti’s life in a book
“It’s good for the voice, it calms anxiety and the clothes don’t get ruined,” he writes. «Three detached chairs. Hips, shoulders, calves. Sometimes he dreams.” Here’s the title. There, in Turin, however, those three chairs are not needed because, instead of anxiety and tiredness, Gigliola now has a new awareness and it amuses her. «What scared me when I was young – that is, being with others – today is the source of my satisfaction» she confesses.
«I once feared the privilege of being recognisable, today I enjoy it. I know I have had a generous destiny. And the freedom, sought when I was young in escape, I now find here, where I have arrived.” On the phone she has a welcoming voice and her words have a rhythm that fits the thoughts of a woman at peace with her true success: having remained true to herself. Dreams of freedom change but “one and only one straight line passes through two points”, she writes.
Gigliola Cinquetti at the 71st Sanremo Festival on March 3, 2021 (Photo by Marco Piraccini/Marco Piraccini Archive/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
Curiosity that opens the mind
So, which “line” passes through both?
“Loneliness. That is, the exhilaration of a feeling that today I experience with enthusiasm. I have always isolated myself, realizing in the meantime that we have an extreme need for others. A continuous hit and run, mine.”
It is 1964 and Luigi Tenco looks for her in the theater to tell her that he hates her because “she is false, hypocritical, respectable”, we read. However, she won in Sanremo that year. Not everyone hates her. What is the stage?
«The maximum breaking of solitude, the place of the deepest communication. And I, being a loner, would run away to bed when I finished singing. Warm. It’s that need for normality that she felt when she was young after every competition, when she immediately wanted to go back to school. Yes, I have always escaped worldliness, that type of life in which the artist is forced to show off. I like the two extremes. Being in contact with a multitude of strangers in authentic communication and then going out into the world alone.”
She writes that if she had been asked what she did in life, she would have replied: I walked.
«Yes, walking for me means being curious. I studied everything. Sailing boat, opera singing, piano, flute, guitar, dance. Once you understand how it works, however, you give up. I’m not serious.”
The passing of time is not a problem
Gigliola Cinquetti at the time of “I’m not old enough”
He has won festivals and awards, traveled the world and been on TV. You wouldn’t think so.
«It’s true, in fact I only notice it when I have to go over the songs before a concert. I go on YouTube, write my name, and every time so much stuff comes up that I say to myself: wow, how many things you’ve done! I see myself again and remember the dress I bought with my father, the adventures before a festival.
Of time passing.
«Yes, but it’s not a problem. It would only be if it didn’t pass.”
Today, is the “soap and water” girl still far from touch-ups?
«Of course, but soap should not be taken literally because it ruins the skin and causes wrinkles. I like the present, yes. I like to see how much I look more and more like the woman I aspired to as a child: grandmother Nina, her paternal one. I liked the way she was old. She was a little 19th century. And luckily I also inherited some of her physical characteristics. I just finished shooting a movie and my colleagues on set called me Emily Dickinson. Well, I feel a bit like her.”
A failed architect
By the way: when he was young he always had a book in his hand and would have gone to classical high school instead of artistic high school. What would he have wanted to write?
“My book. It came out effortlessly and brought me joy. Thinking about it, perhaps also Under the Volcano and The Leopard.”
If she hadn’t been a singer…
«I would have stuck to the tail of a freight train – yes, always him – or I would have been an architect because I have a passion for landscape. Like my father.”
And like Constantine, one of his two sons. Motherhood is a watershed: true or false?
“Very true. As a mother, I said goodbye to that freight train. I went from nomad to sedentary. And that loss of absolute freedom was very painful for me. Then came the success. There is no success in maturity. Success is a disproportionate thing that has a limited duration. Then if anything you live in the echo of that success and it’s wonderful because it’s something that doesn’t disturb, doesn’t invade and is proportionate to how you experienced popularity at the beginning. I believe I have never abused it, I have always thought of the public as a group of people to be respected. I think this was my only merit. As for the spark of success, no, it remains a mysterious fact.
Pippo Baudo with the actress and singer Mita Medici (Patrizia Vistarini), presents Gigliola Cinquetti in the competition at Canzonissima 1973, in Rome. (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)
A lasting but meritless marriage
His marriage has lasted for over forty years and his love story began in a beautiful way.
«My generation experienced an epochal change, namely the referendum on divorce. And I hardly say my husband, my son. I believe that no one is the master of another and the roles of male and female are also restrictive to me but only for a question of intellectual rather than sexual freedom. I believe I need to always redefine my spaces of freedom. In all of this I am happy to be with my husband and our past, but here too I must say one thing: I have no merit.”
Does the spark remain mysterious here too?
“Certain. Sometimes a marriage works, other times it doesn’t. When it goes, it doesn’t mean that there haven’t been crises or doubts. The passing of time gives meaning and depth to a relationship because it is a continuous discovery of one’s own changes. But I don’t consider only the choice of those who stay together to be virtuous. I have great admiration for those who separate because they follow a different but equally valid path.”
Gigliola Cinquetti is old enough now
Gigliola Cinquetti guest at Eurovision 2022. (Getty Images)
Has sung I’m not old enough but does he have it now?
«Now yes, I am old enough to love myself. That song was a promise of love that I could only realize in the future, that is, now. I try to love that girl I talk about in my book, the one to whom something unexpected happened, enjoying the present. In that girl’s book, that is, her, she speaks in the third person. I wanted to distance myself, objectify a story like so many others. I don’t like proclamations or confessions.”
And what do you like besides “dressing up in music”?
“Cooked. I took great care of the health of my family members like this. Maybe the next book will be about cooking. I’m an excellent chef. Every day I do the shopping, I stay on the stove even if I’m alone and I tidy up. Then when I’m in the countryside, I sing. I do it to train. And the only one who hears me use my voice is my dog.”
A journalist had defined her as a “smiling oyster” due to her nature.
«In reality, oysters open and close again. If I had made my life a full-time entertainment I would have emptied myself. When I close myself, however, I smile.”
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