Patty Pravo

Endowed with charisma and allure, Patty Pravo traversed four decades of Italian pop, reshaping her persona from beat-era icon to elegant and daring performer without ever diluting her singular identity. Born Nicoletta Strambelli in Venice on 9 April 1948, she matured within a profoundly cultured household whose circle included the poet Ezra Pound and Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII. At seventeen she fled to Rome, where she soon worked as a dancer at the celebrated Piper Club. Its proprietor, Alberigo Crocetta, arranged her signing with RCA, which issued the debut single “Ragazzo Triste” in 1967. The track scored immediate success, establishing the singer—now billed under the stage name Patty Pravo—as the leading female presence on the Italian beat scene through her distinctive timbre and, above all, her androgynous magnetism. That stature was reinforced the following year by the single “La Bambola,” one of the decade’s most enduring hits. The album Patty Pravo appeared in 1968, followed in 1969 by Concerto per Patty and the Lucio Battisti-penned single “Il Paradiso.” In 1970 Pravo made her Sanremo Music Festival debut, dueting with Little Tony on “La Spada nel Cuore.” Although her popularity remained undiminished, she soon felt confined by the “la ragazza del Piper” image and sought fresh directions. After the 1970 album Patty Pravo and 1971’s Bravo Pravo, she issued more elaborate works such as Di Vero in Fondo and Per Aver Visto un Uomo Piangere e Soffrire Dio Si Trasformò in Musica e Poesia, both from 1971, and Sì… Incoerenza in 1972. A partial return to accessible arrangements produced one of her strongest successes, the 1973 single “Pazza Idea,” featured on the album of the same title and followed by Mai una Signora (1974) and Incontro (1975). Tanto, released in 1976, was recorded with Greek composer Vangelis. In 1978 Ivano Fossati supplied the controversial single “Pensiero Stupendo,” concerning a threesome, which was omitted from the tracklist of Miss Italia. With the 1979 Munich Album Pravo entered a protracted lean period during which media interest waned, evidenced by the modest sales of Cerchi (1982), Occulte Persuasioni (1984, re-released in 1987 as Per una Bambola), and Oltre l’Eden (1989). After a brief detention for hashish possession in 1992, she resurfaced in 1994 with the lush Ideogrammi, recorded in Peking. In 1997 she returned to the Sanremo Music Festival with “E Dimmi Che Non Vuoi Morire,” a rock ballad co-written by Vasco Rossi and Gaetano Curreri of Stadio and later included on the live album Bye Bye Patty, which sold 300,000 copies in Italy alone. Notti, Guai e Libertà, containing songs by Francesco Guccini, Roberto Vecchioni, and Franco Battiato, appeared in 1998 and was followed by Una Donna da Sognare (2000, produced by Vasco Rossi), Radio Station (2002), and the experimental Nic-Unic (2004). The 2007 release Spero Che Ti Piaccia… Pour Toi paid tribute to the Italo-French singer Dalida on the twentieth anniversary of her death.