It bursts bursts me sco: Popster en icoon seksuele revolutie Raffaella Carrà overleden

Italian singer Raffaella Carrà, known for the hit ‘A far l’amore comincia tu’, in which women are called upon to initiate sex, died early this week at the age of 78. She will be buried in Rome on Thursday 9 July.

She was a well-known TV personality not only in Italy. The singer, dancer and actress became an international pop and TV star in the 1970s. She became a symbol of sexual liberation in Catholic Italy, as well as in Spain and abroad because of the emphasis she placed on women’s self-determination in her songs. And the for that time daring clothes in which she danced sensually on TV. The Vatican protested because she was the first woman to show her navel on Italy’s public broadcaster.

The British newspaper The Guardian called Carrà a precursor to Madonna and The Spice Girls, among others. “I think Raffaella Carrà has done more for the liberation of women than many feminists,” said Francesco Vezzoli , the curator of an exhibition on Italian TV in the 1970s at the Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2017. The same year she also received in Madrid the World Pride Award as a gay icon, because she openly championed homosexuals. After her death, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi praised her as someone who “made the name of Italy known throughout the world with her smile and generosity.”

Actress alongside Frank Sinatra

Carrà, born in 1943 as Raffaella Pelloni, was initially an actress in the sixties, including with Frank Sinatra in the Second World War film Von Ryan’s Express. But her big success came as a singer and dancer in the 1970s, including ‘Tuca Tuca’ and her biggest international hit ‘A far l’amor comincia tu’, with the sing-along chorus lines ‘Scoppia, scoppia mi scoppia il cuor’: you make my heart beat faster, burst. That song is also in the Oscar winning movie The Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino from 2013. And in the Netherlands, comedian Richard Groenendijk adapted the song in 2020 into the satirical coronahit ‘Tebbie now on your mouth’, with lines such as ‘And with aunt Sjaan from Cuijk, who lay on her belly in Dijkzigt’. Arnon Grunberg showed the clip of ‘A far l’amore comincia tu’ on the TV show Zomergasten in 1997 as one of his favorite songs.

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