Italian TV Beloved Entertainer Raffaella Carra Dies at 78

A popular Italian TV personality, known as “the lady” or “the queen,” has passed away, and the country is in grief. Raffaella Carrà, age 78, passed away in Rome following a protracted illness, as reported by relatives and friends.

In a statement reported by the Italian news agency ANSA on Monday, her choreographer, lifelong boyfriend, and close friend Sergio Japino said, “She has gone to a better place, where her humanity, her inimitable Humour, and her incredible talent will shine forever.”

Carrà, an extravagantly gorgeous singer, actor, and TV presenter, hosted various Italian shows that featured everyone from Nobel laureates to hula hoop masters.

At the height of her fame, she branched out into the Spanish and Latin American entertainment industries, where she became an openly homosexual icon, in no little part due to a song she produced in the mid-1970s praising gay men for their attractiveness.

Carrà has been compared to American icons Donna Summer, Barbara Walters, and Ann-Margret over the years, but the best way to see her is as a captivating hybrid of all three.

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Contents

1 Carrà was a Catalyst for the Italian Sexual Revolution.
2 Her Sombre TV Interviews were also well-known.

Carrà was a Catalyst for the Italian Sexual Revolution.

NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli described the late singer, Carrà, as “cool” and “gutsy” in an email sent after her death. Poggioli said Carrà was “without trying to be, she was genuinely a feminist pioneer in Italy.”

Poggioli said in a network news feature that the singer’s midriff-baring performance on conservative state television in 1970 and her irresistibly catchy hit songs glorifying women’s sexual pleasure and confidence, such as “A Far l’Amore Comincia Tu,” sparked a sexual revolution in Italy (“Be the One Initiating Sex”).

Carrà, a Bologna native, had his film debut when he was a little child. In her early twenties, she costarred with Frank Sinatra in Von Ryan’s Express, a Hollywood film set in Italy during World War II. Carrà quickly became an influential figure in Italian pop culture after his debut on Italian television.

Her talents were on full display in the 1980s on shows like Canzonissima and Fantastico, which frequently drew an audience of 25 million. That’s over half of Italy’s population at the time.

Her Sombre TV Interviews were also well-known.

Carrà is best known for her uplifting, sex-positive performances, but as Poggioli points out, she also played a key role in saving the life of a young Black American woman, Paula Cooper, who had been sentenced to death in Indiana for murder in 1987.

The year prior, when Carrà visited the United States, she interviewed on David Letterman’s talk show and held her own. It was clear that she was not the type of lady to be bullied.

After Francisco Franco’s overthrow in Spain, the singer’s 60-year career received a new lease on life in that country and throughout Latin America. To honour her status as “an symbol of freedom,” the King of Spain bestowed upon her in 2018 the title of dame “al orden del mérito civil” for her many recordings of songs in the Spanish language.

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Last year, a Spanish musical revue titled Explota was released, using several of her songs. The show makes a compelling case for Carrà to be considered the Mediterranean’s own “one-woman ABBA.”

There are no known examples of the star in either of these categories. Tomorrow night, the Rome mayor’s office stated, Raffaella Carrà’s casket will lay in state at city hall, where Italians can pay their respects to the late actress. The congregation of Ara Coeli, which is close by, will host her funeral on Friday.