The rapper and juror J-Ax was not the only one who fell in love with shock in 2014 when he heard Cristina Scuccia's voice for the first time at a "Blind Audition" in the Italian version of the talent show "The Voice" - and shortly afterwards the singer herself had: a lively young woman in religious habit, a sister from the Ursuline community, as it turned out, quick-witted, in a good mood and gifted with a voice that tore the audience from their seats during the performance of Alicia Keys' song "No One". .
And not just in the hall: the video of her performance went viral on YouTube.
Ursula Scheer
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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The optical-acoustic contrast of godly clothing and pop star qualities on stage was also too entrancing: In Catholic Italy, where brightly made-up and scantily clad showgirls have a tradition on television, “Sister Act” suddenly seemed to have come true.
The unpretentious nun appeared refreshingly different from the “veline”, which was interchangeable in its decorative qualities, and at the same time presented an alternative to the image of traditional Roman Catholic clericalism: female, youthful, pretty, cosmopolitan – albeit not in a gesture of protest, but true to the institution result.
This made her equally sympathetic to those who were far away from the church and those who were close to it.
"I have a gift, so I give it," she said on her The Voice debut: singing self-fulfillment as a pious calling.
No wonder,
that Suor Cristina won the competition.
Not only in their Sicilian home their fans celebrated.
They could hardly have believed their eyes when they switched on the Canale 5 television station these days: there the woman who had become known as a nun sat in a pink pants suit and high heels with the presenter Silvia Toffanin in an interview on the program "Verissimo" (Most Truthful). and announced that she had left the Order and was now pursuing her musical career as Cristina Scuccia - initially from Spain, where she worked as a waitress.
Crisis of faith, bullying within the church, problems with fame, a love relationship?
Nothing of the sort was behind her decision, said the now thirty-four-year-old.
She simply grew internally, changed and had enough time to think about it during the Corona crisis.
Everything had looked like a blessed storybook career.
As a singer in a musical about the founder of the Ursuline Order, Angela Merici, Cristina Scuccia, then a music student, had come into contact with the community and, as she later recounted, had her vocation experience on stage.
She entered at twenty and went to Brazil for the novitiate, at the same time making appearances on television and at festivals of religious music.
After the "The Voice" triumph, Suor Cristina recorded an album.
The fact that Madonna's hit "Like a Virgin" was heard on "Sister Cristina" did not deter Pope Francis from encouraging her personally: "Keep it up," said the pontifex maximus, who at the time was still nurturing hopes of an opening Catholic Church ,
said to her.
The "singing nun", as she was called, became a sought-after advertising medium for Ecclesia.
Suor Cristina has sung in Tokyo, Buenos Aires and New York, appeared on The Today Show, recorded Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah with Patric Scott and a second album, Felice (Happy).
Cristina Scuccia says her fellow sisters always protected and supported her through all of this.
However, she got into an inner crisis.
Supported by a psychologist, she listened to herself during a sabbatical year and also asked how bad the disappointment was for her religious community and her parents.
Then her father died.
At his funeral she wore the habit again, but not afterwards.
"I followed my heart," says Cristina Scuccia.
She is no longer unmistakable as a brand, she will still have to find her individual style as a secular singer - unlike Patrick Kelly, for example, who, after a few years in a French monastery, resumed his old life as a musician.
"I changed my clothes, but my essence is the same," says Cristina Scuccia, and - that she lives "with a smile".