The artistic director has a fundamental role
All the presenters who have come and gone in recent years are music experts. The line of the Festival is decided in collaboration with RAI, but even Pippo Baudo personally followed the selection, listened to the songs together with the artists, advised. Amadeus was born as a DJ: for him it is a spontaneous attitude.
As well as his choice to expand the musical genres at the Festival, to truly represent every part of Italian culture.
A team of 4 or 5 people works with the artistic director: the authors of the texts, the musicians, the resident conductor (Leonardo De Amicis) who is a consultant in listening to the songs.
And he has the task of forming the orchestra of 40 elements: a huge job. About ninety pieces are played in the six episodes of the Festival. The music that is heard from the Sanremo stage is an incredible combination of different musical tastes and is a faithful portrait of what is done in Italy today.
The weight of the music majors on the organization of Sanremo
We tend to forget that the Sanremo Festival is a television event and is constructed as such. The music labels joined in the running, they received a substantial budget from RAI to cover the out-of-pocket expenses of the artists and from that moment on they took care of everything related to the performance of their singers. Logistics, stay, rehearsals, make up, costumes, musicians, choreography and musical direction.
This guarantees participation also for independent labels
Anyone can go to Sanremo if he has a good song. But normally the independent houses, in this case, work alongside the majors for distribution and some parts of the marketing. However, most of the artists are in the hands of multinationals: Sony, for example, this year has 18 artists out of 28 participants in the competition.
Each artist has a dedicated team at his disposal
The Ariston is a very small theatre, flows are managed by a timed badge system which allows teams to enter only one hour before going on stage. The confusion would otherwise be unmanageable, as well as dangerous.
In addition, each singer brings with him a large group of professionals made up of assistants, press office, make-up artists, tailors.
And obviously the professionals who take care of the technical part: the sound directors (each artist works only with one person who deals with the regulation of the transmitted sound), the musicians, their own conductor.
