Ornella Vanoni

Italian singer and songwriter known for her sophisticated pop style. With a career spanning almost seventy years, she was one of Italy's longest-standing musical artists and one of the most popular interpreters of Italian pop music. She released over 120 works including LPs, EPs and greatest hits albums, and sold over 65 million records.

Vanoni started her artistic career in 1960 as a theatre actress. At the same time, she started a music career. The folklore and popular songs she explored in her early records, especially the ones about the criminal underworld in Milan, earned her the nickname cantante della mala ("Underworld Singer") for singing Milanese dialect songs of that genre.

In 1964 she won the Festival of Neapolitan Song with "Tu si na cosa grande". In the following years, she took part in a series of Festivals of Italian song in Sanremo, 1965-1970. In 1972 she sang "Quei giorni insieme a te", the theme from Lucio Fulci's critically acclaimed mystery thriller film Don't Torture a Duckling.

In 1989, she returned to the Sanremo Music Festival with the song "Io come farò". In 1999, she recorded "Alberi", a duet with Enzo Gragnaniello. In 2004 she released an album of duets with Gino Paoli to celebrate her 70th birthday.

In addition to her music career, Vanoni was active in other creative fields, starring on stage and in television shows and movies. In January 1977 she posed nude for the Italian edition of Playboy magazine and requested a statuette by her long time friend the artist Arnaldo Pomodoro as payment.

The inclusion of her song "L'appuntamento" (1970) on the soundtrack of Steven Soderbergh's film Ocean's Twelve in 2004 sparked a worldwide renewal of interest in her music. The soundtrack of the Danish film Toscana (2022, Netflix) also featured the song.

Vanoni was a Protestant. In June 2025, she received an honorary degree in "Music, Culture, Media and Performance" from the University of Milan.

Vanoni had four main romantic relationships.