Sanremo 2022, third evening: from Drusilla to Saviano the Festival makes you think

From our correspondent Francesco Rizzo

February 4th
– SANREMO

In the country that fails to elect a President of the Republic, the Festival that – tomorrow – decides the winner certainly begins with a tribute to Sergio Mattarella. Applause in the audience. It now seems to have become a huge cathedral from which (almost) all of Italy passes the Sanremo-ter of Amadeus, which yesterday entrusted the judgment of all 25 pieces to the opinion poll and televoting jury, no longer to the press room (which had given the pole to Elisa), while Spotify has already decided that Shivers of Mahmood and Blanco is the hit of the Riviera.

numbers

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The world changes, on the other hand, and it is with slight irony that the character-fulcrum of the evening, Drusilla Foer, alias Gianluca Gori, remembers it, perhaps one of the most interesting choices made by Amadeus in this Sanremo (“Your presence tells the meritocracy “, Michele Bravi tells her after her performance). “Do not judge the shell, judge what I do”, said days ago the Tuscan noblewoman with an adventurous past, born on YouTube and arrived at the theater and on TV. A way to make people reflect – it is never enough – on identity and not on labels, not even a novelty at the Festival anymore. Yesterday he slightly scratched her conformism, first throwing himself into singing, then refusing the role of co-host: “It’s hell, I want to sing”. The target is always Amadeus, “she is crazy, she makes me do the valley – insists Drusilla -. If I had known I would have worn something more shocked, I also have a nice tattooed koala”. Except then dressing up as Zorro, in a very pop parody of the male hero’s imagination (“Do you want to undress completely?”, Amadeus asks her, “No, he would have surprises”, she replies).

Drusilla is, in part, the comic element that, at the expense of the artistic director, gave strength to the ratings of the first two evenings. Numbers in hand, in fact, the Festival is traveling like a train. Wednesday, the second evening gathered 11,320,000 spectators, with 55.8% of average share (this figure, for Rai, is the highest since 1995, another ice age for TV): for the first time in ‘era-Auditel, the result improves that of the first episode. And it is not surprising that the peak share (60.9%) coincided with the performance of Zalone: ​​not that of the beginning of the episode which – playing on the border between immediate comedy and parody – did the dirty work of comedians, provoking, but the one who played the virologist Oronzo Carrisi. And, while waiting to check the numbers without Fiorello or Checco, the driving force on young people is confirmed: 66.8% share in the 10-24 age group, + 15% in one year.

dance

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In the meantime, everyone parades on the stage, including (with ovation) the guest Cesare Cremonini who, looking at life, has never been to the Festival. From Highsnob and Hu – who remind someone of Coma Cose but perhaps deserve more – to Fabrizio Moro who, with Sei tu, enters one of the streams of this Sanremo, the weaknesses declared in love. From Aka 7even, who got the piece right or had a noisy fan club in the gallery to Massimo Ranieri, who manages to express himself better after the problems of the first evening. Even if the desire to let loose seems to cross the Ariston: Dargen D’Amico transforms the theater into a much-longed-for disco (and, getting off the stage, he points it out to everyone), Ditonellapiaga-Rector scratches with Chimica more than he manages to do Morandi with Open all doors. Although Mahmood and Blanco always raise the emotional level, one in white, the other in black, to remember the opposite and the complementary in love and Elisa on the piano notes of O Maybe it’s you.

And Achille Lauro? He closes the interpretation of him by undoing his trousers: with him, by now, it is a total scandal. But the cathedral-Sanremo decides to be, to the end, a show that tells the country: Roberto Saviano remembers the magistrates Falcone and Borsellino, thirty years after the Capaci and via D’Amelio massacres, raising the uncomfortable memory of how much, for example, Falcone had enemies even among those who should have fought on his side. Saviano, in front of a portrait of Rita Atria, a witness to justice who committed suicide at the age of 17, emphasizes in particular “the courage of those who denounced, because every time we do not have the strength to take sides, we renounce our dignity, the right to seek our happiness “. A message that, on different themes and tones, runs through the whole Festival.