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Sanremo Music Festival 1961

Italian song contest (11th edition)

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ2142382 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Sanremo Music Festival 1961 (Italian: Festival di Sanremo 1961), officially the 11th Italian Song Festival (11º Festival della canzone italiana), was the eleventh annual Sanremo Music Festival, held at the Sanremo Casino in Sanremo between 26 January and 6 February 1961, and broadcast by Radiotelevisione italiana (RAI). The show was presented by Lilli Lembo and Giuliana Calandra for the first three nights, while Alberto Lionello replaced Calandra in the final night. Ezio Radaelli served as artistic director.

According to the rules of this edition every song was performed in a double performance by a couple of singers or groups. The winners of the festival were Luciano Tajoli and Betty Curtis with the song "Al di là". Curtis went on to perform the song for Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest 1961.

Participants and results

Broadcasts

Local broadcast

All shows were broadcast on Italian Television and Secondo Programma, beginning at 22:00 CET (21:00 UTC).

International broadcast

Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sanremo Music Festival 1961” is italian song contest (11th edition). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Sanremo, Music and Festival, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1961—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Sanremo, Music and Festival is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “italian song contest (11th edition)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2142382. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1961.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Sanremo Music Festival 1961”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sanremo Music Festival 1961 primary sources, Sanremo Music Festival 1961 archive and Sanremo research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sanremo Music Festival 1961”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Sanremo Music Festival 1961” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.