Italy's Return, in Jazz Piano

MAY 15 2011 · 12:30

Raphael Gualazzi · "Madness of Love" · Italy · 2011 Placement: 2nd · Language: English / Italian · Composers: Raphael Gualazzi · Venue: Esprit Arena · Host: Düsseldorf, Germany · Type: return · Broadcast: HD On May 14, 2011, at the Esprit Arena in Düsseldorf, Italy rejoined Eurovision after a thirteen-year absence, and did so with a choice that signalled, deliberately, how little the country intended to play by recent Eurovision rules. Raphael Gualazzi — a young jazz-trained pianist and singer from Urbino — sat at a grand piano in a tuxedo-ish dark suit and performed 'Madness of Love', a piece whose Italian title, 'Follia d'Amore', betrayed its real character: a swing-inflected, vintage-feeling song built on jazz-blues piano voicings, brushed drums and a vocal that owed more to Jamie Cullum or early Jools Holland bands than to contemporary European pop. The stage design was relatively restrained: warm lighting, a small ensemble, Gualazzi's piano at the centre. The English-language verses gave way, on the bridge, to Italian, and Gualazzi performed a brief, genuinely improvised-feeling solo before returning to the final chorus. Juries, newly reintroduced the previous year as a 50% counterweight to the televote, responded strongly. Italy finished second overall to Azerbaijan's Ell & Nikki, but the jury vote, in isolation, reportedly placed 'Madness of Love' at or near the top, vindicating RAI's unusual choice of entry. Context Italy had last competed at Eurovision in 1997 and had, for more than a decade, treated the contest with institutional indifference. RAI's 2011 return was closely tied to a broader rethinking of the country's entertainment broadcasting strategy and to the decision to use the Sanremo Music Festival — Italy's own long-running song contest, and the historical prototype that had inspired Eurovision itself in 1956 — as the selection mechanism. Gualazzi had won the newcomer category at Sanremo 2011 and was internally chosen to represent Italy at Eurovision. The wider political context was the late Berlusconi era, with Italy's cultural institutions under strain; RAI's Eurovision decision read, in context, as an attempt to present a more serious, craft-oriented image abroad. The contest itself had only recently reinstated juries in 2009, partly in response to complaints about pure televote outcomes. Legacy Italy's return in 2011 began a sustained run of high-profile Eurovision results — multiple top-ten finishes, Il Volo's third place in 2015, Francesca Michielin's sixteenth in 2016, Francesco Gabbani's sixth in 2017, Mahmood's second in 2019, and eventually Måneskin's 2021 win. 'Madness of Love' established the country's reputation in the modern Eurovision era for sending stylistically distinctive, craft-focused entries rather than generic Europop. Gualazzi went on to a successful career in European jazz-pop. More broadly, the 2011 result was frequently cited in later debates about the role of juries as a check on televote populism — an argument that would resurface explosively with Käärijä's 2023 runner-up finish. Mythology Gualazzi is sometimes described as an unknown plucked from obscurity; he was already an established young jazz artist in Italy with released albums before his Sanremo newcomer win. The song's title is also frequently confused: its Italian version 'Follia d'Amore' predates the English adaptation 'Madness of Love' used for Eurovision.