The 1st of February 1951, after a short refreshing sleep at the end of the first Sanremo Festival, Nunzio Filogamo got up and went down to the hotel hall. There he found Giulio Razzi, director of the Radio, together with the conductor maestro Cinico Angelini sitting in front of cups of coffee. “They didn’t even say good morning, nor did they give me a chance to say hello to them”, recalls the radio speaker. “I don’t even remember exactly what it was they asked me, for sure I can say that the problem concerned the second Sanremo. The second Sanremo Festival had been given birth to.” These memorable pioneers believed that the Festival had been born in them, but actually it was those millions and millions, women and men with a passion for song, who immediately began singing in the streets and their homes the songs launched at Sanremo and that they’d heard on the radio. Filogamo simply put up the aerials that captured the waves of that success and translated it into a need. The public competition entries for the second Festival were compiled and sent off in October 1951. One month later the record producers had already sent in over 300 songs. The commission – which included maestro Razzi, Riccardo Morbelli, Angelo Nizza and Pier Busseti, director of Sanremo’s Casino – made a selection and published the list of songs chosen around the middle of December. “In early January 1952,” Filogamo recalls, “I got the letter with which I was officially designated as the Festival’s presenter. Naturally I had already been frequenting Radio Torino assiduously for some days and I had already learned all the songs by heart.” On his part maestro Angelini established even more rigorous working hours, even if, at least apparently, the labours of the singers did indeed appear to be less than those of the highly restricted group of the year before (Nilla Pizzi, Achille Togliani, and the Duo Fasano), to which were to be added Gino Latilla, recruited from the world of radio, and Oscar Carboni, already very famous. To one and all it seemed that the increased number of singers was already a considerable factor of relief – this imagining the anguish at the first Festival, when a sudden attack of sore throat to Nilla Pizzi and Togliani could have determined its failure, there being no other singers to replace them with – but Angelini was not of that opinion. For the severe and inflexible maestro, also in such occasions, there were never any reasons for relief. He was wont to say: “If there are more of them and each has to present fewer songs, this increases the dutiful task of a more scrupulous preparation.” “On the eve of every such event,” Nunzio Filogamo explained, “it is in effect impossible to forecast which song will win. Our forecasts, where we hazarded a guess, had little chance of hitting it off, because the public who judges is so varied and multiform that it would be necessary to know its exact composition (age, character, marital status, the birth place of each one etc.) so as to be able to attempt a calculation of what probability one song has of emerging above the others.” Filogamo, once again, is exaggeratedly discreet, because that time a prophecy was easy: Vola colomba (Fly Dove) and Papaveri e papere (Poppies and Ducks) had all the characteristics with which to become popular with the public. They came first and second. Third place went to Una donna prega (A Woman Prays) sung by Pizzi, who was in effect crowned “queen of Italian song” (a few months later she also won the Naples Festival). This singer from the region of Emilia sang of a liberated Trieste, evoking a white dove and the steeple of the church of St. Giusto, but the Italians, the radio listeners and those present at the Festival, gave their preference to Papaveri e papere, the glorious and irresistible tune by Vittorio Mascheroni with words by Mario Panzeri who, perhaps without wanting to, created a link with the then dominant political class, the Christian Democrats, and some even mention the name of its leader Amintore Fanfani. In truth what made it win was the piece’s incredible cheeriness, the way one couldn’t resist singing it, features that led to its being interpreted by international singers who recorded it and launched it across the world, from Bing Crosby to Eddie Costantine, from Yves Montand to Beniamino Gigli. And the public at the Casino was as if infected, as testified to by the recording in our disc, and loudly called for the song, singing it and accompanying it with the rhythmic clapping of hands and stamping of feet, almost improvising a sort of “raspa”, the style of dance fashionable at the time. In actual fact, when the time came for encores the public in the theatre at the Casino loudly called for Grazie dei fiori (Thank You for the Flowers), the song that had won the year before, which goes to show how popular the song was but also how much respect there was for maestro Saverio Seracini, its author, condemned to blindness. In truth Seracini had suffered an attack of bronchitis in 1944 and, in the absence of treatment, a glaucoma had condemned him to the loss of one eye. He became totally blind on Christmas Eve of 1945 and had thus already been blind for seven years. The episode leads one to reflect upon the need for the affection of the public. But if Nilla Pizzi, taking the first three places (an absolute record in the whole of the history of the Sanremo Festival) built her myth, also many other songs from the competition made their mark. Madonna delle Rose (Madonna of the Roses), for example, which came fourth, was for years one of the key songs in Oscar Carboni’s repertoire. The same can be said for Nisa-D’Anzi’s Un disco dall’Italia (A Record from Italy), taken as far as the finals by Gino Latilla. Nel regno dei sogni (In the World of Dreams) another song that made it to the finals, was sung by Nilla Pizzi and Achille Togliani together. One song that didn’t make it to the finals was Testoni-Donida-Fabor’s Cantate e sorridete (Sing and Smile) sung by Oscar Carboni. “I had a very high opinion of Carboni,” recalls maestro Fabio Fabor, aged 86, “but one must remember that in 1952 he was already heading for the end of his career. He sang the song too much in the style of a stornellata: a Narciso Parigi or Luciano Tajoli would have done a better job. In any case the votes came from the spectators in the theatre at the Casino and if the record producers didn’t get a move on with tickets nothing happened.” This disc recalls the feverish atmosphere of that Festival, highlighting every smallest detail. Of course, this was a Festival the feverishness of which cannot even vaguely be compared to that of the Festivals nearer to our times, but in some way it was the forerunner of the frenzy that was to explode in later years. One is struck by the seraphic calmness of Oscar Carboni, always serene, tranquil, and smiling. He never betrayed the slightest emotion, never showed a moment’s irritation. Gino Latilla, instead, whose sense of self-esteem and whose anxiety at the thought of never being able to give of his best oft exploded in disquiet, went from depression to moments of excited good humour typical of his origins from the region of Apulia. Achille Togliani had a better grip of himself and hid his deep anxieties pretending to be worried about a cold, in order to defend himself from which he used to go round all wrapped up, following his mother’s advice - a cold that wasn’t actually threatening him at all. The 1952 Festival was, above all else, the great year for maestro Angelini and for Nunzio Filogamo, which confirms the key role of the radio. They were the two radio stars by definition. Angelini – at times jittery, almost military in his approach with the singers and not always a dab hand with the assignment of songs – put together an extraordinary orchestra, composed of soloists and top quality jazz players, starting with Giovanni D’Ovidio (trumpet), Emilio Daniele (violin, tenor sax), Quirino Spinetti (vibraphone), William Galassini (piano), Mario Bosi (harmonica), Michele Ortuso (guitar), and Gianni Maschio (drums). There was an additional moment of glory for Mario Bosi, “the quack-quacking voice” in the execution of Papaveri e papere, when Filogamo, with a great sense of what is a show, asked the singer to repeat the refrain for the delight of the spectators in the theatre and radio listeners at home. Lastly, apropos of the spectators in the theatre, how can one not recall the birth, reactive and improvised, of that epic phrase “dear friends near and far”. Filogamo expressed himself thus, in some way wishing to address listeners at home - the Secondo Programma (second radio programme) went on air from 10 to 10.45 pm for the songs and from 11.45, for a further thirty minutes, for the results of the votes – but above all addressing the spectators in the theatre, too distracted and snob for the songs and the attention which in his opinion they deserved. The curtains drawn – the Festival took place from 28th to 30th January – the twenty songs became a matter for radio, and went on air repeatedly in the following months. Some became great hits, others less, but the Italians, those who listened to radio, learned them quickly. They did so with gusto and passion, maybe without buying the records, concentrating themselves on what melody, words and refrains could give. In any case they sang them, and if on the morning of 31st January people were already talking about a third Sanremo Festival, this was also thanks to those who had already learned these songs by heart.