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La Rossa.
The red hair.
Flame like.
In addition, the brightly made-up mouth - like an open wound.
And the angry and sensually challenging eyes and the arm that tamed the cascading flowing hairstyle with a bold swing.
That was Maria Ilva Biolcati, who loved the world as Milva. The Italian siren with the shrill, rasping voice that could also plead so wonderfully as it could whisper. Of challenging eroticism, self-determined, playing with her aggressively exhibited sexuality, like the Spanish-born Margarita Carmen Cansino, better known as Hollywood goddess Rita Hayworth.
“And this noon it will be quiet at the harbor / When you ask who is going to die.
/ And then you will hear me say: Everyone!
/ And when the head falls, I say: Oops! ”The Germans knew the Brechtian pirate Jenny primarily from the mouth of the original interpreter Lotte Lenya, where the ability to sing with the Viennese Gosse, Berlin brat and cosmopolitanism mixed to produce proletarian perfection.
And suddenly they heard this somewhat trite ballad from the “Threepenny Opera” with a voice full of longing and desire, Mediterranean temptation and yet merciless vendetta.
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Milva, the pop singer who first became an actress and was then ennobled as a chansonnette, she sang the “Threepenny Opera” as “L'opera da tre soldi” in 1972 in the legendary (also filmed) Giorgio Strehler production at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan as "L'Opéra de quat'sous", for which parts of the text were translated by Boris Vian, at the Parisian cult theater Bouffes du Nord and as "Three Penny Opera" in the English-speaking world.
From the Singspiel she emancipated herself as one of the leading Brecht interpreters, because she was disciplined in using her diverse vocal instruments.
The accolade finally came from New York.
From there, Lotte Lenya wrote in a telegram after hearing Milva at the Berliner Festspiele: "Milva is continuing Kurt Weill's best musical tradition."
Milva in one of her last appearances in March 2012
Source: dpa
At first it looked very different.
Maria Ilva Biolcati was born on July 17, 1939 in Goro near Ferrara.
At twenty she won a new voices contest with over 7,000 entrants.
In 1960 she recorded her first single: a cover version of Edith Piaf's "Milord";
two years later she sang the sacrosanct Piaf repertoire at the Paris Olympia.
But in 1961 Milva made her debut at the Italian Schlager Olymp, the Sanremo Festival, where she took third place.
Analogous to her eternal competitor Mina, the tigress of Cremona, she was revered as "pantera di Goro".
Her daughter, the art critic Martina Corgnati, was born in 1963 from her marriage to her manager Maurizio Corgnati, which lasted from 1961 to 1969.
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Right at the very beginning of her career, Milva caused a sensation with her jazzy,
molto dolce-
sounding “Tango Italiano” (2nd place in Sanremo 1962). Over the decades, long before it became fashionable for revival, she emancipated herself as a wonderfully versatile, dazzling interpreter of the real Argentine tango - from Carlos Gardel to Astor Piazzolla, with whom she has performed again and again.
In the middle of the rebellious sixties, La Rossa, which had long since been politically colored, first worked out the small and large Bert Brecht organon of singing in 1965 with the strict Giorgio Strehler. And suddenly everything political sounded sensual, the dry didactics juicy, the class struggle soft and desirable. In Italian, not only the “Barbara Song” and the “Surabaya Johnny” shone in the southern sun, the “Ballata Della Donna Del Soldato Nazista” suddenly breathed the milder, more sensitive scent of bitter almond and limoncello.
In 1978 Milva recorded the emancipatory single "Living Together" with the music of Mikis Theodorakis, another staunch socialist, and the words of the lyricist Thomas Woitkewitsch, who became meaningful for her, and became known in the German-speaking world.
“To be completely woman and still be free”, that somehow quickly became her motto - and even more that of her numerous followers.
The independent woman who does not hide her feminine attributes.
An ideal image in the beginning gender struggle in the FRG: Schlager as a reflection of social changes.
And Milva right in the middle!
Milva, mid-1970s
Source: picture alliance / United Archives / Siegfried Pilz
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So she advanced to a permanent TV star, in the Saturday night hit show as in the finer chanson corner. Milva gave concerts and tours in the west and east, delighted in the Deutschlandhalle and Friedrichstadtpalast, and recorded songs by Francis Lai and new German-language titles. “Freedom in my language”, composed by Ennio Morricone, and “Hurray, we're still alive”, which Klaus Doldinger set to music, were her greatest successes in this country. Theodorakis and Woitkewitsch also stood behind their best-placed German album "Von Tag zu Tag".
Milva's Sanges victories were long since international. Nevertheless, until 2007 she took part in the Sanremo Festival a total of 15 times without ever winning. In the eighties she also took part in several feature films. In Central, Western and Southern Europe, it was impossible to imagine television without it. Polyglot, she sang her songs in Italian, English, German and French as well as in Spanish, Greek, Portuguese and even Japanese. She even dared to go to the classics by Zarah Leander and Marlene Dietrich.
But a diva also ages. Milva, always and forever red-haired, went on for a long time, relied on what had been achieved, few new facets were added to the long-iconic overall picture. She has appeared at La Scala in Milan, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Royal Albert Hall and the Paris Opéra. "As you make your bed, so you lie," sparkled provocatively as before. She continued to like to be shown the “way to the next whiskey bar”. And still they cheered the masses, even next to Montserrat Caballé and Angelika Milster their seemingly timeless art shone. But at some point the memory of the goddess no longer cooperated.
As early as 2010 she announced that she would no longer appear for health reasons. At the same time her last album with songs by Franco Battiato was released. In 2011 she recorded the duet “Das muss sein” with Stephan Sulke; she was seen on television a few times after that. She then withdrew consistently, was neither caught in the hit ropes nor in the silk cords of the chanson. Milva died on April 23rd in Milan. La Rossa was 81 years old.