Piątek 5 Wrz 2008, 7:34
I just returned from Udine (Italy) where I went to see another favourite singer of mine live – Gianna Nannini. And what a fantastic concert it was!
Since the train ride to Udine is not that long, I decided to join two nice and crazy Dutch girls for this concert and listening to their stories had made me even more looking forward to my first time seeing Gianna live …
On concert day we arrived at Villa Manin already at noon, checking out the location (a beautiful castle, indeed!) and finding a place in the shade where we ate the food which we had bought in the morning at a supermarket nearby.
So there we were, sitting on the lawn on the courtyard of Villa Manin, waiting in the Italian afternoon heat… Our plan to conquer the prima fila (front row) seemed a bit difficult since we had to run quite far from the entrance to the stage. But being among the first people to be let in, we fortunately managed to get into prima fila.
So then there were another one and a half hours of waiting before Gianna finally came on stage at about half past nine. In the beginning she was dressed in super-tight jeans, a white top, a black leather jacket and her typical black boots – but she threw away the leather jacket right after the first song (which was Mosca Cieca). Already the second song was one of my favourites – Revolution from her 1988 album Malafemmina, which is one of my favourites. I had hoped that she would do something from this album – and I was not disappointed (despite Revolution being the only Malafemmina song on the set list). Overall the set list was quite conventional, without any surprises and several songs which she had done at other concerts on this tour (like, for example, O marinaio) were missing. But since it was my first Gianna concert, I was not that picky and it didn't bother me so much - though I usually prefer it when artists are also singing lesser known songs, not only the hits. My favourites besides Revolution were Amandoti, America, Aria and Un giorno disumano.
The first part of Gianna's concert was pure rock and after about half of the concert she shortly went backstage to change her shirt - afterwards she was wearing the black-and-white striped shirt with the glittery things on it. At the beginning of the second part she played a few slower songs, like Notti senza cuore and the new slower version of Sorridi – which I thought was absolutely beautiful! Unfortunately there was some stupid teenage girl standing directly behind us and she sang along out of key all the time (!) during the slower songs where almost everyone in the crowd was just listening attentively – that kinda disturbed the mood and spoiled these enchanting moments a bit. :-(
Seeing Gianna live is indeed almost a whole different thing than watching live videos of her (not that I had had any doubts beforehand ;-) ). First you can notice that she is not very tall (which is nice I think – I am not really tall myself either :-) ) - you don't really notice that on TV and in videos. And her facial (and other) expressions are priceless! She was smiling, grinning, waving, encouraging us to sing along and much more. Especially when being in front row you can see all this very well. :-) Several times it seemed to me that she was looking directly at me (but other people probably thought the same, that she was only looking at them :-P ). She was smiling big time - and so I smiled back and waved.
But at one point I was quite sure that she must have especially noticed me, because it was at a moment when I had my elbows on the barrier for a short time and then I saw her gesturing at me, encouraging me to raise my hands and cheer – which I continued to do then. :-D
Another fun incident was when a girl threw a towel on stage during Profumo and Gianna's reaction was perfect, because she caught it and wiped the sweat off her face in a playfully seductive way ;-) and then threw the towel back. And another time someone threw a scarf on stage and Gianna put it on her head and later on her microphone. Overall she really gave an energetic and expressive performance!
As an encore, after lots of shouting from the crowd, she sang Aria, Un giorno disumano and Notti magiche. As soon as Gianna had left the stage after the final song, it started to rain heavily and we thought that were really lucky that the rain had not started sooner. Before we left the venue I bought a GN key chain and one of these aqua minerale bottles at the merchandise stand.
Despite the conventional set list it was a fantastic first Gianna concert for me and I hope that there will be another tour – also outside Italy – soon!
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a283/tristane/GNLive/gn3.jpg
