Artistic director Amadeus has confirmed in an interview with Italian outlet Sorrisi that he will return as the director for Sanremo 2021.
He also indicated that while he is not making any major changes to the festival, he is making one. The third night of Sanremo 2021 will be dedicated to Italian music and compositions. However, this won’t necessarily be songs that are linked with Sanremo, as was the case in 2020.
The third night of Sanremo 2020 was a special event celebrating the history of the Sanremo festival. For its 70th anniversary, the 24 big artists competing each chose a non-competing duet partner and sang a famous song from the history of Sanremo.
This made a long evening of 24 famous Sanremo songs. As an example, Sanremo contest winner Diodato sang “24 Mila Baci”. This is a song from 1961 that is often considered the first rock and roll song to enter the Sanremo festival. He sang it with Eurovision 2012 entrant Nina Zilli.
This section showed the history of the contest and its influence on Italian music. Amadeus expressed a desire to have the biggest Sanremo evening open to a wider range of Italian music and compositions from all parts of Italy’s music scene.
As for what is changing, it seems that Amadeus would like the contest to “get back to normal” after the anniversary edition. The focus on Italian music will please fans of Sanremo. After all, it is perhaps the biggest show for that.
What we know about Sanremo 2021 so far
Amadeus also confirmed that along with his return, some team members who worked on the 2020 edition of Sanremo will be again working on the contest in 2021. This includes Gaetano Castelli on set, Stefano Vicario on directing and Mario Catapano on lights.
As previously reported, the dates of Sanremo 2021 are in March rather than in February. This will ensure the greatest chance of it being able to go ahead. The specific dates are 2 to 8 March.
It has not yet been confirmed whether Sanremo will be used to select the Eurovision 2021 entry from Italy. However the dates could be used for Eurovision, as the deadline is often in mid-March.
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