The singer Giuni Russo, stage name of Giuseppa Romeo, died twenty years ago at the age of 51. Today, his collaborator and life partner Maria Antonietta Sisini remembers her in an interview with Corriere della Sera. “Every now and then I open a drawer in which there is a mobile phone. Almost always switched off. Sometimes I leave it on top of a book, on a table. When I go out, I leave it at home. I don’t usually use it,” he says. Who talks about his love at first sight: “In 1968, I was playing on Sunday afternoons at the Diomède dance hall. And that’s where I met Giuni Russo. She had come with friends to dance. He already had a certain notoriety (Castrocaro, Sanremo). At one point, they asked Giuni to sing. She came on stage, I handed her the guitar and she sang Aretha Franklin's “Chain of Fools.”
Love and work
Sisini does not answer the question of whether the union with Russo was a union of love and work: “We were passionate about work. And I'll stop here.” She remembers her as a “professional”. But free. She was also very attentive to detail but above all – I understood this in hindsight – she was free. In the environment it was said that she had a bad temper, that she was not obedient, that she did not do what producers or record companies told her to do. She wanted to do what she had decided to do since she was a child, she had her own project and she managed to do what she loved. She was tired of endless learning, of the many pilgrimages that led to nothing.”
And he talks about their relationship with Battiato: “We started collaborating. We had no relationship with a record company. Giuni and I were incapable of creating lyrics, only music. Thus was born the album Energie from our collaboration in 1981. Battiato began to go through the record companies collecting notes. Then the contract with CGD finally arrived.”
Religion
In Sanremo 2003, where Giuni Russo participated while he was ill, there was a decisive meeting with Caterina Caselli: “She said: 'I ask you for forgiveness for never having understood you'. A sort of confession that does her honour. All three of us were in tears.” Then he explains the relationship with faith: “Our families were very religious. Practicing Christians, then as I grew up, I too lost part of my innocence. Giuni was not satisfied with just any words. We went to the monastery to do spiritual exercises. There, she was struck by a book on Saint Teresa of Avila. She fell in love with this woman and it became a real passion.” Finally, her spiritual legacy: “Mamma mia. I don't know the answer. I have everything in my heart. I am excited. An immense legacy to live for 36 years with Giuni. On September 14 in Rome, at the Nuvola di Fuksas, there will be a tribute 20 years after his premature death.”
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