Italian is one of the languages that knows the so-called absolute superlative, a grammatical phenomenon that regularly has translators scratch their heads. A song title like "Sei bellissima" by Loredana Bertè cannot simply be translated as "You are the most beautiful" or "You are more beautiful than all the others." Instead, bumpy phrases have to be used: "very beautiful," for example, or the slightly more elegant "most beautiful," and so on. The problem is that unlike the conventional superlative, the absolute superlative does not imply any kind of comparison, which in turn means that a song title like this one refers a beauty that is somehow incomparable. It's the kind of beauty that is also inherent in Bertè's work. Although the singer never achieved the international cult status of cantautori such as Franco Battiato and Lucio Dalla or was able to score successes like the schmaltz rockers Eros Ramazzotti or Zucchero, she remains a unique figure in Italian music history to this day.
Original
Bertè is born on 20 September 1950 in the province of Reggio Calabria. Together with her three sisters, she grows up in her grandmother's house while her parents pursue their teaching profession elsewhere. The father is violent, the mother absent and unloving, and they divorce in 1962. Accordingly, young Loredana does not stay at home for long and at the age of only fifteen moves to Rome together with her sister Dominica, who is three years older to the day. It's the only logical step for someone who, barely a decade later, will sing "meglio libera che stupida" ("better free than stupid"). The time there was the happiest of her life, she would later say.