Sanremo 2024, Angelina Mango in the lead. Listeners at 60.1%

An average of 10,000,000 viewers (60.1%) watched the third evening of the Sanremo festival (from 9.19pm to 1.38am). Last year, the third evening of the festival (from 9.25pm to 1.59am) gathered an average of 9 million 240 thousand viewers, equal to a 57.6% share.

Attenti ché Angelina Mango has put the arrow in. At the end of the third evening of Sanremo 2024 in the Top 5 determined by televote and radio jury there are in fact first of all the Lucanian singer twice daughter of art, then Ghali, Alessandra Amoroso, Il Tre and Mr. Rain. It's too early to say how much these hierarchies will weigh on the final ranking, the new regulations are made to keep you guessing until the end, but the feeling is that Angelina, whose performance was greeted by a standing ovation at the Ariston, with her Noia has launched a bid for the top step of the podium.

For the rest, taking stock of the five-hour show, it has to be said that this Festival della canzone italiana continues to show problems in its writing. It is a long, very long, inordinately long show, with comic interludes and moments of reflection thrown in at the slightest opportunity, perhaps hoping for a Fiorello flourish, which is not necessarily forthcoming. The set list can only be clogged with competing artists, everything else can only act as a side dish. Amadeus starts off polemically: 'There has been a lot of talk, in my opinion too much, about John Travolta', says the artistic director at the beginning of the episode, 'but the right importance has not been given to the words of Giovanni Allevi'. One would like to reply that too much has been said about it, because the skit has been badly constructed and badly handled, but let's move on, the night is long. Further on, the usual patriotic moment escapes us, this time entrusted to the choir of the Fondazione Arena di Verona performing the Va pensiero. 'Sign o' the times', the Minneapolis genius would have said.

As for the comic interludes, on the third evening they mainly involve co-host Teresa Mannino. And one wonders: is she really the peak of comedy we have in Italy at the moment? She pops up from the top of the Ariston staircase and plays the diva de noantri who begs to come down, like a sixteenth Anna Marchesini. They put on a personalised musical cue and she finally comes down. Once down, after joking about her dress ('My designer? I'm not naming names or there'll be another mess,' she says alluding to the case of Travolta's shoes), she apostrophises Amadeus: 'What have you been up to? For a month now, we have only been talking about Sanremo. Sanremo Giovani, ballots... the journalists are all here. If something happens in the world, we'll never know. It's nice to live this moment of unconsciousness. Sanremo is a carnival'. Very true, but it's not like we're discovering it today.

Teresa Mannino

Mannino will then have a monologue of her own about the fake superiority of man, the perfection of nature, the power 'of' preferred to the power 'on'. In other words: 'We are in 2024,' the actress reflects, alternating between serious and comic registers, 'but we reason as we did 2524 years ago. The Greek philosopher Protagoras said that man is the measure of all things, and for us the rich, white, western man is the measure of all things, only he has lost it, he thinks that everything else in the world is at his disposal and what he does not need is eliminated And women? What do they do? Yet they are busy'. He even does a gag in which he takes flowers from a wheelbarrow and distributes them to the audience. Placing her hands in front of her: 'I also want to do one of those Sanremo gags that aren't funny and don't go anywhere. If she says so.