S1 E6

THURSDAY NEWSLETTER FROM ANDREA BATILLA

WHY SANREMO IS NOT SANREMO ANYMORE

Sanremo, the Italian music tv competition happening this week, has become an unprecedented media showcase. It’s Italy’s version of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, and the Golden Globes all rolled into one.

The first night of the 2025 edition drew 12.6 million viewers with a record-breaking 65.3% share. It’s a kind of national liturgy, a secular mass broadcast live on television, except this time it was far less secular and much more Christian-Catholic. Even the Pope sent a video message.

Watching Sanremo on Rai1, the country’s state national TV channel, is an exercise in understanding the relationship between power and the media, politics and public sentiment, everyday customs and actual reality. The verdict, after the first two nights, is that things are looking bleak. The electricity of Amadeus, the previous anchor, is gone, replaced by the formal conservatism of Pippo Baudo, who, even though he wasn’t physically there, virtually presided over the festival.

Carlo Conti, Gerry Scotti, and Antonella Clerici, anonymous and distant hosts of the first night, represented a return to tradition, to the family-friendly goodwill of the 1980s, where social conflicts and tensions only made it onto the Ariston thatre stage after being sanitized into entertainment, stripped of any real meaning.

On the second night, Conti repeatedly tried to highlight the fact that Bianca Balti is an oncology patient, but she. beautiful, intelligent, and thankfully quick-witted, shut down every reference with humor. Meanwhile, Cristiano Malgioglio played the eternal caricature of the flamboyant gay man, like a scene from La Cage aux Folles, dragging us back by decades.

And what about the endless stream of heart-wrenching ballads about lost or impossible love? Or Simone Cristicchi championing a sugary, unrealistic portrayal of suffering?

Even the major guest performances felt like prime-time TV drama. Noa and Mira Awad sang John Lennon’s Imagine in English, Hebrew, and Arabic after listening to the Pope’s message. Instead of delivering a powerful anti-war statement, their performance felt like a Las Vegas lounge act.
Jovanotti, who has built an entire career on the concept of community singalongs, referred to the sitar player on stage as “the person playing the instrument”. Meanwhile, Damiano David was forced into an overly sentimental rendition of a Lucio Dalla song while, inexplicably, Borghi sat on a bench behind him with a child.