The song known to millions as Volare (oh-oh-oh-oh) is 50 years old this week. It is the most popular Italian song ever, except for the ice cream advert one.
This week at the San Remo festival there will be the unmissable treat of a lengthy tribute to the song.
Its proper name is Nel Blu dipinto di blu (in the blue painted blue)
The song concerns a dream in which the protagonist paints his face and hands blue and flies.
The composer says it was inspired by Marc Chagall’s painting Le coq rouge (the red cock – not easy this is it?).
The State broadcaster refused to broadcast the first performance, at the San Remo festival, saying the words were incomprehensible, but it is suspected because Italian singers at that time were supposed to stand still, whereas Domenico Modugno waved his hands in the air (imagine an Italian doing that)
In other news,
A museum dedicated to Benito Mussolini has been opened in response to requests by German tourists. The museum in Salò, on the shores of Lake Garda, examines the last days of fascism in the town that Mussolini used as his headquarters in the final 19 months of the Second World War.
The Pope graciously received the Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, who graciously presented him with a bottle of beer, brewed in Yorkshire and called The Holy Grail.
A Milan court cleared Silvio Berlusconi of false accounting in the 1980s. The charge had been invalidated by the fact that as Prime Minister in 2002 Berlusconi changed the law to make false accounting no longer a crime.
The Italian bee population fell by almost half in 2007 as 200,000 hives disappeared. As well as the drop in honey production a third of all farm produce depends on insect pollination, and around 80% of this is carried out by bees.
Real estate prices in Italy fell by an average of 2.4% in 2007.
The President asked Vice President Franco Marini to try to form a government after the collapse of the Prodi administration.
Mr Berlusconi made an impassioned plea for an election but it was dismissed on the grounds that the words were incomprehensible and he was waving his hands in the air.
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