Massimo Ranieri

Massimo Ranieri, born Giovanni Calone on 3 May 1951 in Borgo Santa Lucia, Naples, is an Italian singer, actor, television presenter, and theatre director. The fifth of eight children, he began performing at restaurants and wedding receptions at the age of ten. Around four years later, a music producer discovered him and arranged for him to travel to New York, where he recorded an EP under the name Gianni Rock. The four songs he cut in 1964 — "Tanti auguri signora," "Se mi aspetti stasera," "Non chiudere la porta," and "La prima volta" — failed to find an audience, in part because his voice was still changing. He re-emerged two years later under the stage name Massimo Ranieri, making his television debut in 1966 with "Bene Mio" and following that with a 1967 TV appearance performing "Pietà per chi ti ama."

Ranieri's breakthrough as a recording artist came in 1969, when his live television performance of "'O sole mio" established him as a teen idol. That year he released a string of successful singles, including "Rita," "Se bruciasse la città," "Quando l'amore diventa poesia," and "Rose rosse." In 1971, he represented Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin, placing fifth with "L'amore è un attimo," and returned to the contest two years later in Luxembourg with "Chi sarà con te," finishing thirteenth. After a period of diminished commercial activity, he staged a comeback in 1988 with "Perdere l'amore," which won the Sanremo Festival that year. He won the Mia Martini critics award at the Sanremo Festival in 2022 and was announced as a participant in the 2025 edition of the contest, where he placed twenty-third with "Tra le mani un cuore." A concert tour of Italy launched in February 2007, titled "Canto perché non so nuotare...da 40 anni," ran for more than two years, encompassed over 500 performances, and was released as both a CD and a DVD, both of which went platinum.

Ranieri launched his acting career in 1970 with the film Metello, in which he played the title character. The performance earned him the David di Donatello Award for Best Actor and drew strong critical praise. That same year he co-starred with Anna Magnani in the television film La Sciantosa. In 1974 he appeared in Salvo D'Acquisto, portraying a carabiniere executed by the Nazis during World War II. As his recording career slowed in 1975, he shifted his focus to the stage, collaborating with directors including Mauro Bolognini, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, Giorgio de Lullo, Giorgio Strehler, and Maurizio Scaparro across a range of material spanning modern plays, musicals, Molière, and Shakespeare. In 1987, Ranieri appeared on Broadway in Pulcinella. In 1996, he provided both the speaking and singing voice of Quasimodo in the Italian-language release of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a role he later reprised in the sequel. His subsequent screen work included the 2004 French trilogy Les Parisiens, in which he played a street artist; the 2007 docu-film Civico 0, where he portrayed a fruit vendor who becomes homeless after his mother's death; and the 2008 film L'Ultimo Pulcinella. In 2009 he played the storyteller in Polvere di Baghdad, directed by Maurizio Scaparro. The following year he appeared in Passione, a documentary about Neapolitan music directed by John Turturro, and took the role of Domenico Soriano in the RAI Uno miniseries remake of Filumena Marturano, opposite Mariangela Melato in the title role.

On 16 October 2002, Ranieri was appointed Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In his personal life, he fathered a daughter, Cristiana, with Franca Sebastiani in 1971. He had no contact with her during her childhood but reconnected with her when she was approximately twenty years old. In early 2007, he publicly acknowledged their relationship and embraced her for the first time on live television. He became a grandfather in July 2011.