The following article is an overview of the career of Italian pianist, composer, and arranger Angelo Giacomazzi. The information has been brought together from various sources, most notably an interview we did in 2021 with Pino Donaggio, who worked extensively with Giacomazzi in the early stages of his career. A full list of sources can be found at the bottom of this write-up. The article below is subdivided into two main parts; a general career overview (part 3) and a part dedicated to Angelo Giacomazzi’s Eurovision involvement (part 4).
All material below: © Bas Tukker / 2024-25
Contents
- Passport
- Short Eurovision record
- Biography
- Eurovision Song Contest
- Other artists about Angelo Giacomazzi
- Eurovision involvement year by year
- Sources & links
PASSPORT
Born: December 21st, 1907, Genoa (Italy)
Died: April 30th, 1977, Milan (Italy)
Nationality: Italian
SHORT EUROVISION RECORD
Angelo Giacomazzi was scheduled to conduct the orchestra in Luxembourg for Domenico Modugno’s performance of ‘Dio, come ti amo’, Italy’s entry in the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest. However, as Modugno was dissatisfied with the performance of the orchestra during rehearsals, Giacomazzi eventually found himself playing the piano in a combo of three Italian musicians of Modugno’s choice. ‘Dio, come ti amo’ did not obtain a single point, finishing in joint-last position on the scoreboard.
BIOGRAPHY
Angelo Giacomazzi originated from the Ligurian capital of Genoa. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the backgrounds of his family or his upbringing. Given that so many of his contemporaries stress how well-educated he was as a musician, there is a probability that he studied at a music academy, with the Conservatoire of Music ‘Niccolò Paganini’ in his native Genoa being the most obvious candidate. Whatever the truth, Angelo Giacomazzi never seems to have worked as a classical musician; according to the available sources, he started his career as a pianist in Genoa’s club circuit, later going on to work in Turin as well.
In his early years, Giacomazzi also found employment as a pianist on ocean liners of the Lloyd Sabaudo shipping transport line, notably the SS Conte Grande and the SS Conte di Savoia, with which so many Italians crossed the Atlantic Ocean to find a new life in the United States. Somewhat later, in the years 1931-33, he returned to the Western Hemisphere as the piano accompanist of an Italian violinist who did a concert tour across the United States and various Latin American countries. These various journeys doubtlessly left a deep impression on Giacomazzi – with the titles of some of his early compositions, ‘Texas’, ‘Boogie’, ‘Colorado’, and ‘California’, being testimony of this. The character of these pieces proves that the young Giacomazzi was influenced by Afro-American rhythms in general, and jazz in particular.
Returning to Italy, Angelo Giacomazzi joined the Louisiana Orchestra of Piero Rizza, one of the first bands in Italy adopting an idiom leaning towards American-style jazz – much more so than the more conservative approach of one of Rizza’s rival bandleaders, Cinico Angelini, whose ensembles always included strings. Compared to Rizza, Angelini’s arrangements stayed closer to the lyrical Italian musical traditions. It is unclear for how long Giacomazzi was the pianist in Rizza’s band – and if he contributed to the ensemble’s repertoire with compositions or arrangements. At some point, either shortly before the outbreak of World War II or just after it, Giacomazzi left the band to form his own complesso, the term with which Italians used to refer to an extended music ensemble or small orchestra. By that time, he may already have lived and worked in Milan rather than in Liguria.
Giacomazzi at the piano, 1940s
In the immediate aftermath of the war, we find Angelo Giacomazzi doing session work, with the first recording with his name on it being the 78’’ record ‘Besame mucho’ by the well-known radio singer Bruno Pallesi, released on the Milanese label La Voce del Padrone. The record sleeve explains that Pallesi is accompanied by the piano duo Angelo Giacomazzi and Giampiero Boneschi. Giampiero Boneschi was much younger than Angelo Giacomazzi; in fact, at the time of the recording of ‘Besame mucho’, he was just eighteen years old.
When asked about his partnership with Angelo Giacomazzi in an interview almost seventy (!) years later, Boneschi (1927-2019) could be forgiven for not recalling it in detail. In fact, the Pallesi release is the only mention of the Duo Pianistico Boneschi-Giacomazzi. Boneschi’s most vivid memories of Giacomazzi are of their work as bar pianists in Milan’s nightlife in that same period, after World War II: “During the summer season, our paths would cross regularly, when we both returned home by bicycle after working in separate Milanese nightclubs. We would stop by the side of the road, exchange some stories and a few jokes, before each continuing our journey home.”
As it seems, in the remainder of the 1940s, Giacomazzi’s main source of income was in Milan’s live circuit with his own orchestra, for which he penned the arrangements himself. In those years, he even wrote columns about his arranging work in the music magazine Musica Jazz. With colleagues, he had the reputation of being among the most rapid of arrangers. In the Garzanti music encyclopaedia, put together in the early 1950s, the entry about Giacomazzi claims that “he is an indefatigable and extremely fast worker, someone able to write an orchestration while playing in a dance hall, in between one dance session and the other.”
Apart from mentions of his work in nightclubs and bars in Milan, we find his name on record sleeves as a composer here and there. In 1946, his aforementioned creation ‘California’ and a second composition, ‘Old Times’, were recorded for the Columbia company in a Glenn Miller style arrangement by that label’s entertainment orchestra, conducted by Dino Olivieri. Two years later, we find a mention of a Giacomazzi composition of a traditional canzone, ‘È la prima volta’, with lyrics by Giancarlo Testoni, which was recorded for another record company, Fonit, by a singer from Giacomazzi’s native Liguria, Natalino Otto. This time, the orchestral accompaniment was provided by an ensemble conducted by Eros Sciorilli.
One of the releases of Giacomazzi’s hit melody ‘The Italian Theme’, by Cyril Stapleton and His Orchestra
In the early 1950s, after decades of working as a freelancer and already well into his forties, Giacomazzi signed a contract as a staff arranger with Edizioni Curci, one of Italy’s main music publishing companies, based at Galleria del Corso in the heart of Milan. His main activity in those first years with the record company was writing a series of new arrangements to well-known international jazz standards, geared to small orchestras of seven or eight musicians. These arrangements, published by Curci under the title Gemme del Jazz, were a commercial success in a decade when live music was in demand in dance halls, bars, and ballrooms across Italy weekend after weekend.
Natale Massara, an arranger of a younger generation, who made his debut in this capacity in the second half of the 1960s, knew Giacomazzi’s reputation in this field. “Those live arrangements were what he was extremely good at. This was what had brought him fame in the business. In the 1950s, each publishing company had an arranger who specialised in writing ballroom arrangements – a practice which didn’t exist anymore by the time I made my debut, but this had been Giacomazzi’s main line of work for years. He knew better than anyone how to write for different formations, while always bearing in mind that those scores had to be reasonably easy to play. They were intended to be taken into the repertoire of semi-professional and amateur orchestras as well. Arrangements which were simple and accessible sold more copies. Giacomazzi’s main quality as an arranger was his ability to create a pleasant texture of the various instruments put together.”
Apart from his arrangements, Giacomazzi also provided Edizioni Curci with instrumental compositions, ranging from big band jazz to romantic dance repertoire. In 1956, he even had an international hit as a composer, as a charming little foxtrot penned by him made it across the borders. It was recorded as ‘The Italian Theme’ by various bandleaders in different countries, including Cyril Stapleton in the UK and Joe Reisman in the United States. One year later, French singer Bob Martin recorded a version with lyrics under the title ‘En flânant sur les Champs-Elysées’, while Austrian crooner Peter Alexander put it on his repertoire as ‘Auf der Piazza von Milano’ in 1958. That same year, Canadian singer Dorothy Collins released an English version.
As the 1950s progressed, more and more records were released by entertainment singers who had won notoriety on the back of their radio performances, notably in the San Remo Festival and other song contests which became the flywheel of Italy’s popular music in those years. Now and again, supplementing his fixed income at Edizioni Curci, Angelo Giacomazzi made excursions as a record arranger, accepting freelance commissions from various record companies, notably La Voce del Padrone and Columbia. In the second half of the 1950s, he wrote charts for songs recorded by Jula De Palma, Sergio Bruni, and others. In 1959, Giacomazzi also arranged two single records by young jazz singer Nicola Arigliano.
Close-up, 1950s
Session guitarist Franco Cerri (1926-2021) worked with Angelo Giacomazzi frequently in the recording studios. As it turns out, Cerri deeply admired Giacomazzi’s professionalism. “He was an excellent music writer, obviously well educated – and known for the speed with which he produced his arrangements. Moreover, he was a sweet man, who was friends with everybody.” Cerri recalls that Giacomazzi was especially good friends with Gorni Kramer, a composer and bandleader of the same generation. “They had offices at Galleria del Corso which were only a couple of metres away from each other.” When Giacomazzi found out that the much younger Cerri also tried his hand at composing, he instantly took an interest. “He was eager to look through my scores. It was obvious that he was happy to discover the style which I and other younger jazz players employed while writing their music – and Giacomazzi was especially curious about me, who had the reputation of being an autodidact. He was always friendly and supportive about what I had come up with.”
This testimony by Franco Cerri answers at least part of the question of how Angelo Giacomazzi managed to have such a long career as an arranger. If he had not been interested in the innovations in popular music, he would doubtlessly have sunk away into oblivion as a musician of a previous generation. Instead, he made sure to stay up-to-date with contemporary developments in the business, thus allowing himself to move with the times, even into old age in the 1970s – a truly remarkable feat, given that not many professions were so liable to the fashion of the day as record arranging.
In 1958, Giacomazzi had his first proven involvement in the San Remo Festival, when he wrote the band arrangements to the two songs with which Cristina Jorio participated in the contest, ‘Mille volte’ and ‘Io sono te’. Jorio performed her songs to the accompaniment of the sextet of Alberto Semprini. Probably, Giacomazzi wrote more San Remo arrangements for Semprini’s band, which was involved in four editions of the festival between 1954 and 1958, but as most record scores in those days remained uncredited, no exact data are available.
Eventually, in 1959, following the example of rival publishing company Ricordi and others, Edizioni Curci took the leap to found its own record company. The decision must have been motivated in part by the success of Domenico Modugno, a singer-songwriter who had won the 1958 and 1959 San Remo Festivals with two songs which went on to worldwide success, ‘Nel blu dipinto di blu’ (better known subsequently by the first word of the chorus, ‘Volare’) and ‘Piove’. Modugno had been a discovery of Giuseppe Gramitto Ricci, one of the staff members of Edizioni Curci, who doubled as Modugno’s manager. All of Modugno’s creations were published as sheet music by Edizioni Curci, but the release of the single records had to be given away to a record company – a serious loss of income, which Gramitto Ricci was keen to avoid in the future. In the 1960s, Curci quickly established itself as one of Italy’s main record companies.
Angelo Giacomazzi’s first proven involvement in the San Remo Festival came in 1958 with Cristina Jorio and her two entries in that edition of the contest, ‘Mille volte’, and ‘Io sono te’
Needless to say, in his capacity of staff arranger, Angelo Giacomazzi played a huge part in the output of Curci and its sub-labels Accordo and Carosello, producing countless arrangements and recording them with Milanese studio orchestras. As the demand for live orchestrations for dancehall ensembles steadily decreased in the early 1960s, the centre of gravity of Giacomazzi’s activities shifted toward record arranging.
In the first half of the 1960s, Giacomazzi wrote arrangements for the likes of Narciso Parigi, Enzo Jannacci, and Salvatore Adamo. Moreover, in 1961, Luciano Virgili finished as runner-up in the Canzonissima Festival with Giacomazzi’s arrangement to ‘Tempesta’, a song created by another composer employed by Edizioni Curci, Giovanni D’Anzi.
Another artist helped on his way by Giacomazzi and his arrangements was a debuting singer-songwriter from Venice, Pino Donaggio, who was a violin student at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatoire in Milan. Signed by Curci in the late 1950s, Donaggio had his breakthrough at the 1961 San Remo Festival with ‘Come sinfonia’, a romantic melody which betrayed his origins as a student of classical music.
When asked about his first encounter with Angelo Giacomazzi, Donaggio recalls, “That must have been in 1959, when I was invited to do an audition with Edizioni Curci. There, I found myself in front of a group of people, including Giuseppe Gramitto Ricci, Giovanni D’Anzi, and Angelo Giacomazzi. They listened, while I presented to them two of my songs, ‘Mia Laura’ and ‘Ho paura’. They must have liked what they heard, because I was signed by Curci.”
Although under contract with Curci as the publisher of his compositions, Pino Donaggio signed a record deal with Columbia – and thus the two songs mentioned by Donaggio were released on a single on the Columbia label, with the orchestrations being taken care of by that company’s in-house arranger and conductor, Pino Calvi. In the following years, however, Donaggio also recorded arrangements by Giacomazzi, notably on the 1961 album Recital, which included his San Remo hit ‘Come sinfonia’.
“When I came up with ‘Come sinfonia’, the decision was taken at Curci to submit it for the San Remo Festival,” Donaggio recalls. “It was a song they thought was nice and suitable for the festival. It wasn’t the first time I worked with Giacomazzi, because even if the arrangements were done by others, he was there to rehearse songs with me. He was the factotum musicale of Curci, so to speak, someone who jumped in whenever the need arose. Young singers were entrusted to him to learn from his experience. He may have been a lot older than me, but I remember him as being just a wonderful man – an amazing person, really. Somehow, he liked working with youngsters. The age gap didn’t come into that at all. It was just very natural and straightforward.”
“Given that I was a singer-songwriter and a student of classical music,” Donaggio continues, “I was able to transmit my ideas for the arrangements to him. When I composed a song, I already had a broad sense of what I wanted it to sound like. I discussed with him what I had in mind for the intro, for example. The great thing about Giacomazzi was that he never tried to press his style onto my music. His preferences must have been with jazz – but my music didn’t have any jazz influences, and Giacomazzi understood this. He just took into account my ideas and then he wrote out the arrangement working from there. From then on, his huge experience as a writer for live orchestras took over. He knew how to let an arrangement sound well – not just in the recording studio, but live on a theatre stage as well. Dealing with a festival which was transmitted on radio and television is a completely different thing than a studio session! In that respect, I cannot but admire his expertise and know-how. Yes, Giacomazzi really was a bravo maestro.”
In the 1961 San Remo Festival, ‘Come sinfonia’ was interpreted by Pino Donaggio to the accompaniment of the orchestra of Gianfranco Intra. With usually two bandleaders being chosen as musical directors of the contest in those years, it was not until 1964 that each act could pick the conductor of its choice. Nevertheless, Giacomazzi showed up in San Remo, as Donaggio recalls. “He was there to attend the rehearsals, to check if the arrangement sounded right. For Giacomazzi, San Remo was home. He lived and worked in Milan, but he had a second house in San Remo – a really beautiful house not far from the casino, the venue of the festival.”
In 1961, apart from ‘Come sinfonia’, Giacomazzi had a hand as an arranger in two more songs competing in San Remo, both interpreted by Sergio Bruni. In the following years, he continued to be a regular contributor of festival arrangements, signing up for the scores to songs interpreted by Narciso Parigi, Sergio Bruni, and two more entries for Pino Donaggio, ‘Giovane, giovane’ (1963) and ‘Motivo d’amore’ (1964).
Away from his involvement as an arranger, Giacomazzi also had a hand in the 1963 San Remo Festival as a member of the selection committee, presided over by film director and actor Victor De Sica, which picked the twenty entries taking part in that year’s competition.
Walter Molino’s drawing of the 1963 San Remo selection committee, presided by director and actor Victor De Sica (standing, red tie) – with Angelo Giacomazzi on the left-hand side (grinning white-haired figure). Front page of the Sunday edition of Italian daily Corriere della Sera
Although record arranging had now become Giacomazzi’s main activity, he never became a one-trick pony. In 1961, when Curci’s star artist Domenico Modugno wrote a musical comedy called Rinaldo in campo, in which he himself played the main part, Giacomazzi was called upon to write all the arrangements. In 1962, for Marino Girolami’s film Il medico delle donne, starring Gino Bramieri, Giacomazzi teamed up with his Curci colleague Giovanni D’Anzi to write the soundtrack. Possibly, D’Anzi, who was an experienced film composer, found himself under pressure to finish the score in time, with Giacomazzi jumping in in order to avoid missing the deadline.
Pianist and arranger Giampiero Boneschi knew that Giacomazzi was the ideal person to lend a hand in such situations. “Other than being a really nice person, he was a musician who was incredibly versatile. He could do anything you asked of him. I would describe him as the ultimate Stakhanovite of arranging, someone who took on enormous workloads without any problem. If a situation had to be solved at the last minute, Giacomazzi was your man, so to speak.”
By the mid-1960s, with the only other remaining record arranging colleague of his own generation, Cinico Angelini, having withdrawn from the business, Angelo Giacomazzi was doubtlessly the oldest arranger in the pop music business in Italy, but, if anything, he seemed to increase his productivity rather than slowing down. In 1966, he helped Sergio Bruni win the Naples Song Festival, arranging and conducting his entry ‘Bella’. Furthermore, he penned charts for the likes of Robertino, Renato Rascel, and even Italy’s absolute superstar vocalist, Mina. In 1967, Giacomazzi teamed up with Domenico Modugno to record new arrangements to several of his old hits, including ‘Volare’ and ‘Piove’.
That same year, Giacomazzi finally made his debut as a conductor in the San Remo Festival, leading the orchestra for his own arrangements to the hauntingly beautiful ‘Sopra i tetti azzurri del mio pazzo amore’ by Domenico Modugno and ‘Dove credi di andare?’ by Memo Remigi, only the latter of which qualified for the final. Two years later, when Remigi took part in the festival for a second time, his performance of ‘Una famiglia’ was once again conducted by Giacomazzi.
Angelo Giacomazzi wrote the original orchestration to ‘La vita (This Is My Life)’ as well as five other Italian songs recorded by Shirley Bassey in the early months of 1968
Memo Remigi, a singer-songwriter from Milan, worked extensively with Giacomazzi in those years. Like others, he also recalls how Giacomazzi, seemingly effortlessly and almost unconsciously, worked on various recording projects at the same time. Furthermore, Remigi has sharp memories of the maestro’s outward appearance. “Giacomazzi looked like a pixie! He was rather short in stature, with a facial expression enlivened by two bushy, black eyebrows, which contrasted sharply with his white hair. When conducting, he never used a baton – and given that he had very short arms, the movements of his arms gave me the impression that I was watching a little angel in front of the orchestra.”
Also in 1968, Giacomazzi was one of the conductors in the San Remo Festival, leading the orchestra for Elio Gandolfi’s performance of ‘La vita’ – a song composed as well as arranged by well-known television conductor Bruno Canfora. As was usual in those years, each song was performed on the San Remo stage in two different versions. For the 1968 festival, a string of high-profile international artists had been invited to take part in the festival – and the second version of ‘La vita’ was interpreted by none other than British songstress Shirley Bassey. In fact, this version had been arranged by Angelo Giacomazzi, but, perhaps understandably, Bassey was coupled to a British conductor, Brian Fahey, enabling her to convey her wishes to him in her own language. Apart from ‘La vita’, Giacomazzi recorded five other pieces with Shirley Bassey in the Milanese recording studio that year.
Back in England, Shirley Bassey also released an English-language version, ‘This Is My Life’, in an arrangement written by Johnny Harris, which was an almost identical copy of Giacomazzi’s original score. The song was destined to become one of the most popular on her repertoire – and, ten years later, the melody was given a second life, when she re-recorded it with a hooky disco arrangement by American producer Nick DeCaro.
Strikingly, Giacomazzi conducted only four entries in three editions of the San Remo Festival (1967-69), although he signed his name under many more arrangements for the contest. While researching, we stumbled upon seven more Giacomazzi arrangements, which were presented on the San Remo stage between 1969 and 1974 by, among others, Robertino, the debuting Carla Bissi (who later took on the stage name Alice), and Domenico Modugno. However, for all of those songs, other conductors were chosen – younger musicians, such as Mario Magenta, Aldo Buonocore, Tony De Vita, and the promising film composer Franco Micalizzi.
About to count in the orchestra for Elio Gandolfi’s performance of ‘La vita’ in the 1968 San Remo Festival
One of the artists involved was Pino Donaggio, who took part in the San Remo editions of 1970, 1971, and 1972, with entries arranged by Giacomazzi, but conducted by others. When asked about the matter, Donaggio explains, “Bear in mind that Giacomazzi was an employee at Edizioni Curci. The decision who would conduct a song in the festival ultimately was taken by Curci’s board of directors. Now, Giacomazzi was already a bit older and he was a short guy who frankly didn’t look that well on television. In terms of his looks, it wasn’t a Brad Pitt who walked onto that conductor’s platform, if you know what I mean! That’s why they sometimes chose a younger musician to do the conducting job instead of him.”
“So Curci’s management decided which songs were given to which arrangers,” Donaggio continues. “Giacomazzi sat at his desk at Curci every day, writing music, from nine to five, but obviously he couldn’t write everything. That’s why they invited freelancers to take on part of the workload. This happened to my songs as well, although in my case, I personally took the decision who to ask as a replacement. I notably worked with Giampiero Reverberi or Giulio Libano. I never noticed Giacomazzi being unhappy about others conducting his arrangements in San Remo. Having worked with him for so long, I got to know him quite well and I’m pretty sure that he never really longed to take centre-stage. His passion was creating music, writing arrangements, and nothing more. Basta! He was a modest man who shrugged his shoulders and got on with life.”
Even though Giacomazzi did not appear on the conductor’s platform in San Remo that often, many of his colleagues saw him as the ultimate quality standard of what a live orchestration should sound like, as Natale Massara recalls. “I remember sitting in rehearsals with some colleagues, listening to the scores of our fellow arrangers being played by the orchestra. Sometimes, when an arrangement didn’t sound right, we would discuss among one another what was wrong with it. Usually, we concluded that the arranger in question lacked the theoretical knowledge to write a good orchestration. And do you know what we would say to one another, when something like that occurred? ‘Giacomazzi wouldn’t have made that mistake.’ I know it’s just an anecdote, but I can assure you this is a real story! It shows you just how respected this old man still was. Especially his brass arrangements were second to none. I remember once getting to conduct a studio arrangement by him for Fratelli La Bionda, because Giacomazzi himself couldn’t make it to the session – and of course it was flawless, an excellent score from start to finish.”
In 1972, Giacomazzi turned 65, but he didn’t seem to think about retiring or taking it easy. In the last years of his life, he notably worked with Topo Gigio, Memo Remigi, and Sergio Bruni. He also arranged or co-arranged Pino Donaggio’s last three solo albums before Donaggio turned to film composing and writing his own arrangements. Furthermore, Giacomazzi continued his partnership with Domenico Modugno. For Modugno’s San Remo entry ‘Questa è la mia vita’ (1974), he wrote the arrangement, conducted on this occasion by Piero Pintucci. One year later, the old maestro had a hand in a big hit, penning the arrangement to Modugno’s ‘Piange… il telefono’.
“Domenico Modugno must have loved working with Giacomazzi”, Pino Donaggio opines. “Why? Well, Modugno was a cantautore, a singer-songwriter like me. No doubt, he brought in his own ideas for the arrangement. You want to make sure that your composition is given a sound which matches the song. It wasn’t that Giacomazzi was a weak or malleable person, but he understood what you wanted him to write. A single word was sufficient. Pushing his own vision wasn’t his style. He just simply was very good at translating other people’s ideas into an orchestration, coupled with an efficient way of working. And he was so fast! I know that Giacomazzi also wrote a lot of arrangements for Tony De Vita’s orchestra in his later years, but De Vita wasn’t the only bandleader who relied on Giacomazzi’s arrangements. The man was the paragon of dependability.”
One could be forgiven for thinking that Giacomazzi continued working and writing arrangements until such an advanced age because he had not taken care of his financial situation earlier on in life, but Pino Donaggio stresses that this wasn’t the case. “Not at all. As I told you, Giacomazzi possessed a spacious second house on the Riviera coast in San Remo. He once invited me to come and visit him, probably while I was staying in San Remo to take part in the festival. He didn’t continue working because he needed the money. Music was this man’s passion! He had written arrangements all his life and that’s what he loved doing.”
In San Remo, Giacomazzi preferred the seclusion of his own house, but sometimes he showed his face in Dodo Goya’s music store at Via Gioberti, which was a meeting place of musicians. Dodo Goya himself originally was a jazz bassist. The shop served as a living room for musicians, professionals and amateurs. Often, improvised jam sessions would take place. On those limited occasions when Giacomazzi dropped by, all the others were in awe, because they knew about the man’s impressive trajectory in the music business. Although they were all musicians, they addressed only him with the respectful epithet maestro.
The last arranging credits with Giacomazzi’s name on them are from 1976, the track ‘Dietro l’amore’ on Domenico Modugno’s album ‘L’anniversario’; and an Italian cover version of Paul Burkhard’s 1950s monster hit ‘Oh, mein Papa’, recorded by child star Francesca Guadagna. In the spring of the following year, Angelo Giacomazzi passed away in Milan at the age of 69, being survived by his wife Fulvia D’Andrea.
“Sadly, I only heard about his passing months later, because I was away in America at the time,” Pino Donaggio recalls. “The poor guy! When he died, I lost a friend, certainly. It wasn’t that we were close on a personal level, because our partnership was always about music and music alone. But whenever we met, the rapport was always there – a relationship which was always pleasant and informal. We never once fell out with each other. He had been there from the beginning of my career. I think he influenced me quite profoundly. Later on, my main line of work became composing and arranging soundtracks. Giacomazzi was the first who had shown me how to turn a composition into a full orchestra. But first and foremost, he was a good man. Yes, una persona stupenda, a wonderful character, that’s what he was.”
EUROVISION SONG CONTEST
In the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest, as in all previous editions since the event was first held in 1956, Italian broadcaster RAI submitted the song which had won the San Remo Festival as its entry. The 1966 San Remo winner was ‘Dio, come ti amo’, a lyrical declaration of love with words and music by singer-songwriter Domenico Modugno. It was Modugno’s fourth San Remo win, after ‘Nel blu dipinto di blu (Volare)’ in 1958, ‘Piove (Ciao, ciao, bambina)’ in 1959, and ‘Addio, addio’ in 1962. The first two songs, which he had also performed in Eurovision – meeting limited success with international jurors – were huge worldwide hits.
In the early years of San Remo, each song was usually performed in two different arrangements by two different artists. In 1962, Modugno’s ‘Addio, addio’ had also been performed on the San Remo stage by operatic tenor Claudio Villa. To Modugno’s frustration, Italian broadcaster RAI chose Villa as its Eurovision representative. As Claudio Villa finished in the bottom half of the scoreboard at the international Eurovision final in Luxembourg, the irascible Modugno must have been determined not to allow another artist to take away his opportunity for Eurovision glory in 1966.
However, in San Remo 1966, that other artist happened to be Gigliola Cinquetti, the teenage star who had stormed to victory in San Remo as well as Eurovision with ‘Non ho l’età’ in 1964. Given her likeability and recently won international fame, Cinquetti seemed the obvious choice for Eurovision from a commercial point of view, but, as she recalls it, Modugno insisted on not being passed over this time. According to Cinquetti, Modugno simply “wanted to win everything himself.” In his book Sanremo 50, journalist Dario Salvatori claims that “Modugno behaved with his usual arrogance, maintaining that only he, on the back of his international stardom, would be capable of representing Italy.”
Whatever may be true of that, RAI eventually picked the 38-year-old Modugno as its representative for the Eurovision final, due to be held in Luxembourg, perhaps in order to allow the star singer and actor the opportunity to achieve “the Eurovision victory which he deserves for his international prestige,” as RAI’s own listings magazine Radiocorriere put it. Aside from that, Modugno’s version of the song was more successful in the Italian charts than Cinquetti’s.
Domenico Modugno during his winning performance of ‘Dio, come ti amo’ in the 1966 San Remo Festival
At the San Remo Festival, Modugno performed his song in a full orchestral version, arranged by Giulio Libano and conducted on the festival stage by Nello Ciangherotti. This version came out as a single, but for some reason, a second version was released subsequently; a completely different version with a more minimalistic arrangement consisting of an Hawaiian or steel guitar, organ, rhythm guitar, bass, percussion, and some woodwind instruments. This new version had been put together by Angelo Giacomazzi, the in-house arranger of Modugno’s publishing company Curci. It was by no means the first time Modugno had worked with Giacomazzi. Possibly, their first mutual involvement had been in 1961, when Giacomazzi wrote the arrangements to Modugno’s musical comedy Rinaldo in campo.
No doubt in collaboration with Curci’s management, the decision was taken to send Angelo Giacomazzi to Luxembourg as Modugno’s musical director – and not Libano or Ciangherotti, which could be taken as a sign that Modugno preferred to work with Giacomazzi’s new arrangement in Luxembourg rather than with the orchestral version as presented on the San Remo stage. Reportedly, prior to undertaking the journey to Luxembourg, Modugno had filed a request with RAI to accredit a combo of musicians to travel along with him to the festival, but, to his fury, this plea had been turned down by broadcasting officials – possibly for budgetary reasons.
As such, there was little other option for Domenico Modugno than to work with the original orchestral arrangement – or possibly an adapted version, but this remains unclear. At the first rehearsal in Luxembourg, the singer went on to cause considerable chaos, as he contested that Jean Roderes’ festival orchestra failed to meet his quality standards. True to form, Modugno expressed his dissatisfaction in no uncertain terms. Asking to be given permission to work with the musicians of his own choice, Modugno is said to have received a prompt reaction of the Luxembourgian director of the show, René Steichen, over the intercom, “Mr Modugno will sing with the orchestra, like all the other singers,” upon which Modugno allegedly replied, “Under these conditions, I refuse to sing – good evening,” and paced off the stage, no doubt leaving Angelo Giacomazzi and the musicians in the local orchestra baffled.
“To this day I don’t know what was wrong with the way we were playing,” says Bob Scholer, the double-bass player in the orchestra in Luxembourg. “Modugno interrupted the rehearsal with our grand orchestra. At first, we didn’t know what was happening. We saw him entering in a heavy discussion with his conductor and some others. As we soon found out, he stated that we weren’t good enough and did not play his song correctly. He was quite arrogant and felt he was something special, probably because of the success he had had in the past with ‘Volare’. The man was acting as if he was the star of the show. He then arranged for musicians to be flown in from Italy to accompany him on stage. We were quite angry about his behaviour, all the more so because we got no complaints from any of the other countries.”
Host Mike Bongiorno looking on as Domenico Modugno congratulates his fellow winner of the San Remo Festival, Gigliola Cinquetti. In the background, the conductors of the two performances, Gianfranco Monaldi (for Cinquetti) and Nello Ciangherotti (for Modugno) can be discerned as they are about to shake hands
After that first rehearsal, Domenico Modugno filed a complaint at the organising committee about the orchestra, requesting to be given permission to work with his own musicians instead. Possibly, he pointed to the fact that notably Sweden’s delegation had brought a recorder player who performed on stage along with the orchestra, backing up his country’s vocal duo. Furthermore, The Netherlands had brought two guitarists to accompany their act, a parody of Mexican music, but these musicians were essentially just props, with the arrangement being played integrally by the Luxembourg orchestra.
Although Eurovision rules stipulated that the music arrangements had to be submitted well in advance of the competition, René Steichen and the scrutineer of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Clifford Brown, eventually relented, giving in to Modugno’s request. Hurriedly, phone calls were made to Curci’s offices in Rome. On the day of the competition, Curci’s board member Giuseppe Gramitto Ricci, who was also Modugno’s manager, and two musicians, a Hawaii guitar player and an organist, arrived on the scene in Luxembourg – just in time for the general rehearsal. Apart from the steel guitar and the organ, there was an upright piano on a side stage to Modugno’s left. This instrument, which did not feature in the combo arrangement on the alternative record version of the song released by Modugno, was played by Angelo Giacomazzi.
The musical director of the UK entry, Harry Rabinowitz, was in the auditorium, when the tormented Italian representative and his three acolytes walked onto the stage of the Villa Louvigny Theatre. In his inimitable tongue in cheek way, Rabinowitz recalled what happened next. “Modugno turned up with his small accompanying ensemble. We were particularly looking forward to hearing his song, because Modugno was an important man. He previously wrote ‘Volare’ and that had been a big, big hit. He might be a threat to us! While he was on stage performing the song with his group, all of us were sitting quietly listening… and he was still performing four and a half minutes later! When they were done, the producer came down and said, ‘Monsieur Modugno, you know the rules of this contest… there’s a maximum of three minutes per item!’ Like all other artists, he was subject to the point of time. Modugno was a very tall man and he rose to his full height, ‘What is your proposal?’ When he was told he had to slice a bit off to comply with Eurovision rules, he exploded in a paroxysm of rage, ‘What are you talking about? I cut my music for nobody!’”
“Then, he gave a signal to his little band of musicians,” Rabinowitz continued. “They very slowly and gently packed up their instruments, took their sheet music, and put it away. One after the other, in file, they trooped slowly to the exit door of the hall, which was at the far end of the theatre – the door gave out onto the street. When they got there, they suddenly realised nobody was trying to stop them. Then came a moment of utter anti-climax; led by Modugno, they walked back onto the stage. Modugno said, ‘OK, we cut,’ and then continued the rehearsal as if nothing had happened! Now all of this took place in total silence; we all sat there in the hall, dumbfounded. We didn’t know what to say, what to think or do! We thought that it was extraordinarily funny though. Eventually, when the rehearsal was over, we could not help breaking into laughter and applause.”
Domenico Modugno and Gigliola Cinquetti featuring in an Italian magazine following their San Remo success
Of course, also given that Rabinowitz gave his account more than forty years after the contest, his recollections have to be taken with a pinch of salt, but there’s no doubt that the general atmosphere around the Italian entry was by now very unpleasant indeed. The recollections of Portugal’s conductor Jorge Costa Pinto, although far less detailed, confirm Rabinowitz’s story, “I recall the Italian singer Domenico Modugno made a terrible scene. Being a big star, he was one of the favourites to win the festival – and his behaviour reflected that, in a bad way.”
Reportedly, following this rehearsal, Steichen and Brown asked Modugno to revert to the original orchestral arrangement, which remained within the time frame, to the despair of Gramitto Ricci. “Why on earth has permission been withdrawn for the combo to perform?”, a reporter of Dutch daily De Volkskrant overheard the manager saying backstage. “It doesn’t make sense. Don’t they understand that all of this will impact negatively on Domenico Modugno’s artistic achievement?”
In the end, the local organisation backed down a second time, allowing Modugno to work with his own musicians. It is unclear if he was given permission to break the time limit as well. The version he performed in the Eurovision final lasted 3 minutes and 19 seconds, exactly as long as the second record version of the song, arranged by Giacomazzi. Given that he was now working with only three musicians, the arrangement presented on the Eurovision stage sounded very basic indeed.
Listening to the video of Domenico Modugno’s performance of ‘Dio, come ti amo’ in the Eurovision Song Contest, Natale Massara, an Italian saxophonist and arranger who made his debut in light-entertainment music in the 1960s, comments, “Even for those times, this arrangement sounds rather old-fashioned. Let me state clearly that both Ciangherotti and Giacomazzi were great arrangers, but there must have been a discussion between Modugno and his entourage about dressing down the arrangement to emphasise the dramatic force of the piece. I’m quite convinced this was a conscious choice made by them to make more of an impression in the Eurovision Song Contest.”
Domenico Modugno rehearsing his performance of ‘Dio, come ti amo’ on the Eurovision stage in Luxembourg’s Villa Louvigny. Note that the string section in the orchestra is playing along – hence this photo must have been taken during the singer’s first rehearsal
The same reporter of De Volkskrant described Modugno’s performance in the festival in the following ironic words, “Goodness, did Modugno try. He wiped the sweat from his face, closed his eyes, and slowly swayed back and forth, while his combo produced the sound of a musical saw. The TV director went one better by showing a close-up of Modugno, while the saw was whining off-screen. This was really top-notch. That’s also what Dr [Gramitto] Ricci stated, who went on to say, ‘Domenico is a great San Remo star. He’s a great man, a great artist. Domenico sounds splendid with his combo.’ ‘God, How I Love You’ was awarded with zero points from the European juries last Saturday night. Dr Ricci, Modugno, and his auxiliary forces were nowhere to be found at the party afterwards.”
Indeed, with Murphy’s Law doubling down on Domenico Modugno, his song finished at the bottom of the scoreboard, ex aequo with the Monegasque entry, which remained without any jury points as well. Finland’s conductor on the night, Ossi Runne, saw from close range how the singer reacted to the jury’s verdict backstage, “Accidentally, I found myself sitting next to him backstage while the votes were coming in. As his song was ignored by jury after jury, he got more and more desperate. ‘Non è possibile, non è possibile!’ were the words he repeated time after time. He was a great songwriter, but his song in Luxembourg was simply overdramatic. He wanted to bring across a profound emotion, but it was too much. People would laugh at it.”
Understandably, given what had happened previously, the musicians in the orchestra did not shed a tear about the result, as double-bass player Bob Scholer recalls, “In the end, as the jury results showed, nobody liked his song. As you will understand, when Modugno did not even get one single point in the voting and finished last, all of us orchestra musicians were really gloating and satisfied!”
In the Italian media, attempts were made to explain why Modugno’s performance failed to charm the international juries. “The song was presented without a real melody,” as a journalist of La Stampa analyses, referring to the minimalistic music accompaniment, “Furthermore, foreigners have a traditionalist vision of Italian song – that is, they want to listen to mandolins, a tenor voice, high notes, a sweetness of voice, all of which could not be found in Modugno’s interpretation. Some stick to their opinion that with Gigliola Cinquetti as performer, the same song would have enjoyed more success.” Another Italian newspaper reported that Modugno had been unhappy about his stay in Luxembourg from the outset, to the point of complaining about the hotel accommodation which had been provided to him. Apparently, the singer was in a mood to quarrel and bicker about absolutely anything.
Domenico Modugno surrounded by journalists and record company officials following the singer’s fall-out with the organising committee during the dress rehearsal in Luxembourg
Looking back on the chain of events, Modugno’s behaviour has all the features of a badly thought-out publicity stunt. Given that he had recorded a completely new arrangement of ‘Dio, come ti amo’ following the San Remo Festival, he must have been keen to promote this release on a large stage – and what better place to do so than in the Eurovision Song Contest, with an audience of millions across Europe tuning in?
It will remain forever unclear if Modugno would have scored better with the original orchestral score. The Netherlands’ television commentator in the contest, Teddy Scholten, explained to her viewers how beautiful Modugno’s rendition with the orchestra in the first rehearsal had been. If Modugno had been less stubborn, there would also have been the possibility of integrating the organ and steel guitar of his own combo into the orchestral arrangement. Given that Angelo Giacomazzi had the reputation of being an incredibly rapid arranger who knew how to solve Gordian knots in musical terms, something along these lines could have been on the table. However, the singer’s confrontational approach towards the organising committee and the orchestra provided by Luxembourg’s broadcaster CLT made it impossible for him to retrace his steps and agree to work with the local orchestra after all.
Another question remaining is what the feelings of Angelo Giacomazzi were, while all of this was happening around him. In the broadcast, he is seen walking onto the stage alongside Modugno with a smile, then pacing off to the piano on the side stage. Unfortunately, the show’s director René Steichen chose not to provide any close-ups of Giacomazzi and the two other Italian musicians accompanying Modugno. Although ‘Dio, come ti amo’ was performed completely live, the song goes down in Eurovision history as the first entry without orchestral accompaniment. Giacomazzi is credited as the conductor of the song, whereas in reality he was Modugno’s pianist and musical director on the night, leading the combo of three, himself included.
Judging by the testimonies of others about his modesty and soft temper, Giacomazzi must have accepted the circumstances around him as they were in Luxembourg. After all, the unobtrusive conductor, respected for his musical expertise but not the type of person to stand up to a towering ego like Modugno, had only been asked to step in by his employer, Edizioni Curci. His livelihood did not depend on this trip to Luxembourg. The event does not seem to have harmed his relationship with Modugno either, given that the two continued to work together in the following years. They were back as a team in the San Remo Festival in 1967, with Giacomazzi conducting the orchestra to Modugno’s magnificent ballad ‘Sopra i tetti azzurri del mio pazzo amore’. Several years later, in 1975, Giacomazzi’s last involvement as an arranger in a big hit was with Modugno’s ‘Piange… il telefono’. To Giacomazzi, by that time a seasoned, 58-year-old musician, Eurovision 1966 probably was little more than a case of shrugging one’s shoulders and moving on to the following musical project.
OTHER ARTISTS ABOUT ANGELO GIACOMAZZI
Testimonies of various artists who worked with Giacomazzi, or knew him, have been included in the article above.
EUROVISION INVOLVEMENT YEAR BY YEAR
Country – Italy
Song title – “Dio come ti amo”
Rendition – Domenico Modugno
Lyrics – Domenico Modugno
Composition – Domenico Modugno
Studio arrangement (orchestral version) – Giulio Libano
(San Remo orchestra conducted by Nello Ciangherotti)
Studio arrangement (combo version) – Angelo Giacomazzi
Live orchestration – Angelo Giacomazzi
“Conductor” – Angelo Giacomazzi
Score – 17th place (0 votes)
SOURCES & LINKS
- Bas Tukker did an interview with Pino Donaggio about Angelo Giacomazzi, July 2021. Thanks to Natale Massara for bringing me in touch with Maestro Donaggio
- Natale Massara himself also kindly agreed to share his memories of Angelo Giacomazzi with us (January 2021 & October 2024)
- Information retrieved from interviews with other conductors who took part in the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest, Harry Rabinowitz (interview December 2009), Ossi Runne (August 2015), and Jorge Costa Pinto (March 2018)
- An email exchange with Bob Scholer, the double-bass player in the 1966 Eurovision orchestra in Luxembourg’s Villa Louvigny (October-December 2010 & November 2024)
- An article detailing the career of Angelo Giacomazzi: “Angelo Giacomazzi, dallo swing a Modugno”, by Freddy Colt, published in: Eco della Riviera Magazine, no. 18, May 11th, 2011
- A book by Freddy Colt, “Demo Bruzzone – tra Barzizza e Giacomazzi. L’arte dell’arrangiamento musicale a Sanremo”, ed. Mellophonium Broadsides: San Remo 2022 (2nd edition)
- Two books dedicated to the history of the San Remo Festival, “Sanremo 50” by Dario Salvatori (ed. RAI-ERI: Rome 2000) & “Festival di Sanremo. Almanacco illustrato della Canzone Italiana” by Eddy Anselmi (ed. Panini: Modena 2009)
- A Dutch newspaper article about what went on backstage at Eurovision 1966: “Oostenrijker Jürgens wint songfestival”, in: De Volkskrant, March 7th, 1966
- A playlist of Angelo Giacomazzi’s music can be accessed by clicking this YouTube link
- Photos courtesy of Nicolò Sperandei, Freddy Colt, and Ferry van der Zant
- Thanks to Mark Coupar for proofreading the manuscript
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