Wow. Gianna Nannini, the bad girl of Italian rock, just had a baby at 54. The baby’s name is Penelope, because it took Gianna a long time to get to her, or so she says. Gianna, a mom. Her entire persona is rebellion and it’s hard to wrap my mind around her enforcing discipline and teaching manners to a youngster. Not that she has bad manner, but she has spent a lifetime defying convention.
Gianna is the author of one of my favorite songs in the world. Just listen to this gem, BELLO IMPOSSIBILE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoco58gF8h0
There isn’t a woman (or a man for that matter) who hasn’t been infatuated with someone impossibly beautiful and simply impossible to deal with.
Gianna is the Bruce Springsteen of Italian rock, and she has a similar voice–throaty and raucous, as if singing somehow hurts and yet she has to do it. And like the Boss, she ran away from home. But you mustn’t think of running away from some rankly polluted, broken down former industrial dump, like Bruce:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggWZUm1ETNo
No, Gianna ran away from SIENA. Where her parents were Sienese royalty, the owners of a very famous pasticceria that had been in the family for generations, called, well, NANNINI. Siena is exactly the kind of city that treasures superb craftsmen, businesses that have been in the family for generations and have become part of the landscape, as the series of Nannini Pasticcerie are.
It must have been hard to run away from Siena, where life is incredibly sweet, and absolutely everything you see is beautiful, honed over the centuries to be perfect. That tree on that hill–perfect. The confluence of small streets making a piazza of all the earth colors–perfect. The Palio, which has a central role in every Sienese citizen’s life–perfect.
it takes guts to run away from a perfect city and a perfect life. Siena has an enviable standard of living, integrating modern elements slowly and well down through the centuries. there is amazing comity and closeness among the Sienese, though if you’re not born Sienese, don’t really think of moving there. People’s relationships go back centuries and they don’t take their past lightly.
I wrote a murder mystery set in Siena during the Palio, the only book in English with that setting (Frederick Forsyth wrote a novella set in Siena during the Palio), DYING FOR SIENA. I know the city well anyway, but i did my due diligence, spending days and days wandering the city specifically with my book in mind, eating the delicious food, sitting in the Piazza del Campo, one of the most gorgeous places on earth, calling it research.
The Italian police headquarters, just off the cathedral, within whiffing distance of the best coffee shop in the world, is a delight to visit. The Commissario and his Ispettori were friendly and incredibly helpful. However, no one could remember the last time there had been a murder.
No, it’s not some decaying industrial town in New Jersey.
