Mina
Amanti di valore

THE REVIEW

Once, while talking about this unusual and incredibly brave album, Franco Califano recalled Mina's great sensitivity, who between one recording and another would often stop and shed tears of genuine emotion. Listening again to the lyrics, all written by the Califfo, it's not difficult to understand why Italy's greatest singer fell in love with those songs, giving life to an excellent album, from start to finish. A true songwriter's album, to have and rediscover.

The early '70s represent one of the best vocal periods for Mazzini: smoking, first and foremost, but also recent motherhood, gave us a tone less robust and increasingly less sharp, but certainly more poignant and nevertheless very, very evocative. Ideal for the intimate and introspective Mina of this record. And it seems incredible that forty years have passed, given the extraordinary modernity of her interpretative approach in an era when such operations were pure avant-garde for a singer so popular, not only in Italy.

"Amanti di valore" was released alongside "Frutta e verdura" towards the end of 1973; at the time, Mina regularly released two new albums a year: one of original songs, and another generally composed of a more unusual and sought-after selection of tracks, perhaps characterized by a very specific thematic thread, or dedicated to a single author, as in this case happened with Franco Califano. The sleeve with the two LPs then ranked 2nd place in the overall sales chart for 1974. Of the two, "Frutta e verdura" certainly had more success at the time, driven by the mega-hit "E poi..." (which was also far "ahead" for the discography of the time). But it was "Amanti di valore" that was the more modern and refined LP that the Lady had recorded until that moment, marking a new artistic growth for her, the umpteenth in fifteen years of career.

An intense, mature, "lived" album, not without some hints, here and there, also to the healthiest disengagement. Ten songs, almost all about love, in which Mina's interpretative profile is depicted through various musical atmospheres: dramatic in "Il poeta che non pensa mai", ironic in "Un po' d'uva", languid and exquisite in the same "Amanti di valore", playful in "La solita storia d'amore", and then again nostalgic, cynical, resigned... And the list goes on: Mina is the greatest Italian interpreter precisely because she has been able to give "voice" (and what a voice!) to all human states of mind, beyond male and female.

A qualitative peak, that of "Amanti di valore," that the singer would obviously reach several other times in her incredible recording career, yet this work seems to maintain an entirely special charm. Thanks also to the music of Carlo Pes, who also arranged the entire work alongside the great Pino Presti, a historic collaborator of the best Mina of the '70s.