Sanremo 2010

Hope you are all watching the Sanremo Festival 2010!  This is the annual festival of Italian song, held each year at Sanremo (in Liguria).  Italy pretty much shuts down while the festival is happening, with everyone being glued to their TV sets.

In years past, there has been some great performances at the Sanremo festival.  This one by Adriano Celentano is one of my favorites.  This entry, Canzone, took second place at Sanremo 1968:



Sanremo 2010 started off with 15 artists in the competition, which lasts for 5 nights.  (One of the artists is the winner of X-factor, which is a show similar to "American Idol".)   At the end of each night a couple of artists are eliminated until the "final showdown". Some of the artists are new, some are veteran singers...and I also believe there is a separate category called "Sanremo nuovo generazione" which are the up-and-coming young singers.

Among the artists at Sanremo 2010 was Toto Cutugno (renowned for his 1982 hit L'italiano), who sung Aeroplani.  A great song, but unfortunately it didn't make the cut after the first night of the festival.



If you have the RAI International channel on cable, then you can watch the festival as it happens. If not, then you can go to the website www.sanremo.rai.it to view the individual performances after each night's competition is completed.  (Due to copyright laws, live streaming  of the Festival outside Italy is not permitted.)

More about Sanremo to come later....for now I'm going to listen to some musica italiana!  Buon ascolto!