Milva was the milord’s aggressive carnality and the frenzy of popular song. The woman who (on stage) lived twice: from Sanremo to Strehler. To his daughter, Martina Corgnati, an established art historian and professor in Brera, we say that her parable recalls that of Silvana Mangano, from Riso Amaro to Visconti. “Yes,” he replies, “but with one difference.” In Milva there was no change at the time, but during: La Filanda is from 1970, Brecht was already singing in 1967; Six years later she filmed “The Threepenny Opera” and at the same time played a prostitute in a musical with Gino Bramieri.
Who was Milva?
“A strict mother who taught me that a woman must take care of herself and be independent; a strong but insecure personality with a desperate need for validation. There has never been a lack of unity and solidarity. And he loved me. She was intuitive, empathetic, but she was immediately somewhere else, she couldn’t talk to me for more than 15 minutes at a time. The separation between her and my father Maurizio, a director, was difficult. She was 29, he was 51 and I was 5. I grew up with my maternal grandmother, Noemi, in a terrible villa in Leinì, near Turin. Milva came when she could. She was busy with her professional life. She lived in Milan with her partner, the child-loving actor Mario Piave. She denied cooking, she liked to eat well, but when she tried her hand at carbonara once, she asked: Does the egg go in the shell in the pasta water? Let’s assume he could heat ready meals without burning them.
The family of origin?
“She was humble, her mother was a seamstress, her father sold fish at the market, and years later when the truck overturned, Milva wanted to buy her another one.” My father’s family, who was a partisan, a wonderful man, consisted of lawyers and notaries.
Is it true that your mother had an abortion?
“Yes, before I got pregnant at 22. She wanted her son, my father thought that wasn’t the case. He agreed to do something he didn’t want and didn’t feel like doing. It was worse because he would have been a love child. I wrote about that in the book that just came out, Milva. The Last Diva, an autobiography that is a psychodrama because it is played in the third person, as if I were taking her place. I didn’t want to start gossip and add spice to certain unforgiving and scandalous news reports of the time. But I tell it authentically, even in sensitive episodes, for example she was happy to have a daughter, but maybe she would have preferred a son like everyone else in the ’60s.”
– Milva with her daughter Martina
Chapter Alexanderplatz. A special partnership existed with Franco Battiato.
“He was an unprecedented type of man, cultured, nonconformist, with his own oriental education and a great inner balance.” My mother, who was very religious, found in Battiato someone closer to God than she was. I also made friends with Franco, he gave me a small part in his film Perduto amor, we went to Moscow and they almost arrested us for entering at the Bolshoi, we approached the advertisers who are banned there. The memories of Battiato led me to success in Germany.
Germany loved Milva: Did Milva love Germany?
“He has toyed with the idea of moving there, but has never vacationed there. There was enough time for the concerts. They called her “The Great Lady”. She filled arenas with 10,000 people, she put on her black leather jacket, they waited for her at the exit as if she were Elton John. Many were convinced that she was German. In reality, he memorized the lyrics but didn’t speak the language. Milva built the culture with tenacity, she had an inferiority complex towards academia.”
The friendship with Piazzolla?
“They worked together a lot, he was snappy, Astor made serious jokes, he really was the Argentinian homo vertical, once he wrote on the bathroom mirror with Milva’s lipstick that one of his musicians was gay.” Something unthinkable today.
The meeting with Strehler?
‘Great director who was denied acting. When an actor was too much of the protagonist in rehearsal, he put himself in the foreground because he wanted to act. He changed Milva’s appearance, her hair was loose and bright red, he treated her like a child, he called her Milvina, it was the relationship between teacher and student. On his deathbed, after being acquitted of Mani Pulite’s charge of illegally using Piccolo’s funds, he said to her on a solemn evening: But why did the two of us never have an affair?
His mother also got into tax problems.
‘The commotion was started by a Swiss official, it was a minor matter which was clarified in a short time, but the news reached the media before the investigation and made big headlines. Fausto Bertinotti said: With the money Milva took from the tax authorities, kindergartens could be opened; she was with him, a communist, at the April 25 demonstrations, they marched together. He saw it as a betrayal. He had a Democratic Party ID for many years, it was like your friends spitting on you. He didn’t dare leave the house again until everything was clear. Milva has always earned honestly and paid her taxes.”
She was involved in politics on the left and loved luxury and furs.
“It is so, it is part of its discontinuity.” She has lived many lives: a poor girl from the Po Delta, a bourgeois lady in Turin, the redhead of political freedom, the international superstar like perhaps no other in Italy.. When she bought her first diamond, she couldn’t take it. She was obsessed with money, she counted and counted every salary, every payment made, she wrote down how much she earned.
Goro’s panther was tormented.
“She couldn’t be alone, my father was her mentor.”
In Sanremo he sang “I am happy: has he ever been happy?”
“She was loved very much. She was generous. And she had ups and downs, she had some depressive aspects, but she refused to go into analysis, she wasn’t the type, she said give me Prozac and that was it. In her last years she was torn by guilt: both towards my father, whom he left for Mario Piave (a passion that ended), and for depriving me of a childhood with my parents.”
As an artist, the past few years have been complicated.
“He made a good album with Giorgio Faletti, who was very popular as a crime writer, but it didn’t sell, he understood that it was no longer his time.” From 2007 until his death in 1921 he suffered from degenerative disease neurological disease. Years I wouldn’t wish on anyone. He had lost control, but he recognized me to the end. The last public participation took place at an event in support of the victims of the Emilia Romagna earthquake in 2010. I have donated their archive with scores, manuscripts, notes, photos, prizes and honors from the University of Bologna. I always listen to his records.
Do you like her more than she was popular or sophisticated?
“I like Lili Marleen, not because she’s more sophisticated, it’s my taste.”