Adriano Celentano — singer with roots in the USSR
Adriano Celentano was born in Milan on 6 January 1938, at 14 Via Cristoforo Gluck, the address he later turned into the song "Il ragazzo della via Gluck" (1966). His parents, Leontino Celentano and Giuditta Giuva, came from Foggia in Apulia and had moved north for work. He has no Russian ancestry; his connection with Russia is the audience he found in the Soviet Union.
He worked as a watchmaker before his singing career began in the late 1950s, and became the leading figure of Italian rock and roll, nicknamed Il Molleggiato, the springy one, for his dancing. In 1962 he founded his own record label, Clan Celentano. His songs include "Azzurro" (1968) and "Prisencolinensinainciusol" (1972), written to imitate the sound of English, and with some 150 million records sold he is among the best-selling Italian artists of all time. He has also appeared in about forty films, mostly comedies, several of which he directed.
In the Soviet Union his films reached an audience larger than any he had at home. Il bisbetico domato (1980), a loose reworking of The Taming of the Shrew in which he played a misanthropic farmer opposite Ornella Muti, was released there in 1983 as «Укрощение строптивого». It sold 56 million tickets, more than any other foreign film that year, and ranks eleventh among the highest-grossing foreign films in Soviet history.
In June 1987, despite a well-known fear of flying, he travelled to Moscow and gave a concert at the Olympic Stadium on 20 June. It was filmed and released as Live in Moscow, and it remains one of the rare occasions on which he performed abroad.
In Italy he has worked as an actor, director and television presenter for more than six decades. After eighteen years without live concerts, his 2012 performances at the Arena di Verona were broadcast on Canale 5 and drew more than nine million viewers. He married the singer and actress Claudia Mori in 1964, and in 1970 the two of them together won the Sanremo Festival with "Chi non lavora non fa l'amore"; their daughter Rosalinda is an actress.
Tracing the roots — Milan (Italy)
He has no Russian ancestry: his parents came from Foggia in Apulia. His connection is his popularity in the Soviet Union, where Il bisbetico domato sold 56 million tickets in 1983, and the concert he gave in Moscow in 1987.
His parents came from Foggia in Apulia; he has no Russian ancestry.
Milan (Italy). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.