Garda Festival Highlights: Contest, Artists, and Winners
The stages of the Festival del Garda continue relentlessly, switching from one shore to the other of the lake. Tonight, Cantalago lands, starting at 9:30 pm, along the Lungolago Regina Adelaide for an event featuring the return of Susanna Huckstep as host, the former Miss Italy native of Trieste with an English father. During the show, alongside the four contestants competing in the interpretive sections and the two original songs, there will also be the election of the most beautiful girl of Garda, a contest valid for the Miss Italy selections.
The event and the artists on stage
The stage will then be taken over by artists from the fixed cast of the traveling festival organized by the associazione Benacus (artistic director Andrea Vantini), with the sponsorship of the Veneto and Lombardia Regions, the Autonomous Province of Trento, the Garda Community, the tourism departments of the Provinces of Verona and Brescia, and in collaboration with the Riviera degli Olivi Tourist Promotion Agency.
Meanwhile, record-breaking attendance was registered on Tuesday in Toscolano Maderno. Over 1,300 people, with seats filled half an hour before the show started, followed with great enthusiasm the spectacular splits, but especially the legs of the dance troupe directed by choreographer Nando De Bortoli.
The athletic dancers—Deborah Arduini, Federica Bianchini, Lisa Lambo, Serena Parisotto, and Silvia Poletti—from the Verona-based Vis Club dance school, performed irresistibly to Offenbach’s Can Can. The audience was also engaged by the humor of Giusy Zenere, with rapid-fire jokes and monologues full of laughter, and the voice of Diletta Orlandi performing a summery piece like Rain on the Heart.
A well-balanced cocktail, mixed with grace and professionalism by Federica Moro—who appeared almost austere yet always very sensitive, encouraging singers and highlighting humanitarian initiatives such as the Salomè project for the remote adoption of children from the slum of Ambodivona in Madagascar. In short, a magical evening, perhaps even perfect, if not for the decision of the popular jury—composed mainly of local officials—to crown the sixteen-year-old Mariangela Parpinel from Novate Milanese as the winner of the interpretive section.
The reactions and the voting results
Nothing scandalous, of course, but most found the clear gap in vocal ability and range between Morena Lusenti of Manerba, sadly second with And Then by Giorgia, and the Milanese singer interpreting I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston quite evident. The podium was completed by Giuseppe Concin from Sopramonte (Per Amore di Bocelli) and Paola Cestari from Gardolo (Il Mare d’Inverno by Ruggieri), on whose performances it is better to say nothing.
In the original song category, the victory went instead to Stefano Peli from Concesio (Se Ci Sei Tu) over Alessandro Molinaro from Caldiero (L’ombra del Ciliegio). The event concluded with the election of Miss Toscolano, awarded to Elena Olivieri, a seventeen-year-old girl from Brescia.