Fiordaliso

Born February 19, 1956, in Piacenza as Marina Fiordaliso, the Italian melodic singer grew up as the daughter of a musician and began formal piano and vocal training at the Piacenza Music Academy. She cut her first recordings alongside Orchestra Bagutti before claiming first prize at the 1981 Castrocaro Music Festival with “Scappa Via.” That victory secured her Sanremo debut the following year with “Una Sporca Poesia,” and she returned in 1983 with “Oramai.” Although both singles reached broad audiences, neither appeared on her self-titled debut album, issued in autumn 1983. The LP was repackaged the next year under the title Non Voglio Mica la Luna to spotlight the title track that became her signature success.

Summer 1984 brought the EP Discoquattro, followed in 1985 by her second studio set, A Ciascuno la Sua Donna, which featured material written expressly for her by Zucchero, Vasco Rossi, and Enrico Ruggeri. A subsequent tour was captured on the live album Fiordaliso — Dal Vivo per il Mondo, reissued in 1986 as Applausi a Fiordaliso with a revised track listing. After issuing another album titled Fiordaliso in 1987, she left Durium for EMI and delivered three further records between 1990 and 1992: La Vita Si Balla, Il Portico di Dio—her strongest-selling project of the decade—and Io Ci Sarò.

Steeped in the once-dominant yet waning style of Italian melodic song, Fiordaliso, who had already gained recognition in Spain, found her commercial momentum slowing despite occasional forays into soul-inflected arrangements. Following an acoustic tour she joined the cast of the long-running television program Domenica In from 1993 to 1994, then issued the 1994 retrospective E Adesso Voglio la Luna, which paired updated renditions of earlier hits with two new songs. In 1995 she made her theatrical debut in the Italian production of Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, retitled Fratelli di Sangue, and the next year premiered her own one-woman show, Fiordaliso Disco Live, a blend of original material and well-known covers that she would perform for more than ten years.

An all-Spanish album, Como Te Amaré, appeared in 1997; its Italian counterpart, Sei Bellissima, followed in 1999 and was expanded with new tracks for a 2004 reissue titled Fiordaliso.. Come Si Fa. Returning to Sanremo for a ninth time in 2002, she performed “Accidenti a Te,” drawn from Risolutamente Decisa, an album that mixed fresh material with older songs recast in a blues-oriented style. Two years later she competed on the reality series Music Farm and later co-hosted Piazza Grande, whose cover versions were gathered on the 2006 compilation of the same name. That year she also took a leading role in the Italian staging of the musical Menopause.