Time.news – But then, after all, what is a good evening? Nothing: an empty word, which slips away into the obvious. A compound that tastes of grandmother’s rosolio and of a time that by now, in fact, has passed the sunset. Slight melancholy, yes, but also a thin strip of blue in the blue painted blue of a sky seen at Ponte Milvio.
And then to say it smacks of delicate respect full of restraint, of restrained joy that is a prelude to the most intimately lovable expectations. “Good evening, what a pleasure it makes me / meet you again” have sung for decades our televisions still far from the Pal as from the Sekam. And it is perhaps for this reason that knowing of Nicoletta Orsomando’s death the evening is tinged with what is then its most natural connotation, nostalgia.
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Nicoletta Orsomando
Mrs. Orsomando, because few others the appellation fit with equal precision, was actually a Signorina, and even this appellation was connatural to her like no other. And in those times, when saying Signorina was a matter of education, as it was rude to say it to a Lady, it could be a backbeat. But there was nothing more natural. Indeed only those who had the manners of a lady could aspire to be a young lady, and to say good evening.
In the heart of Peppe the Boxeur
Le Signorine Buonasera, we say it for the young people who most miss the television watch, but only Netflix and similar trinkets, were those female presences who announced the TV programs. More or less what today is the decoder menu function, only that all epoch was much more pleasant, and you never got tired of the sight of reading titles and plots written for those who have twelve tenths. Ah, how easy it was.
In addition, it was evident that they had studied diction. They never missed a vowel, never an inflection that escaped the rigors of Crusca. A simple Italian, but flawless: it was Rai (because we speak of public service, certainly not of its followers) that taught how to speak to a country that was still 30 percent illiterate.
Inevitable that Nicoletta Orsomando, who led the squad of the Signorine Buonasera, was an authentically popular character. The proof lies in the fact that his name was never superimposed when he appeared at the end of the Tg to give the announcement of Canzonissima, but everyone knew her.
Yet his was the first television name that baby boomers learned, as soon as they learned the art of pushing the heavy mechanical buttons, one red for the national team and one blue for the second, of the channel changer. Needless to say, it also made some lonely heads dream. Or that precisely that name of his, which smacks of a French term of endearment, caused a furore in the middle and middle classes, those for which possession of the television represented a first form of social redemption.
Indeed, a second: the first was the Lambretta. In any case, it is no coincidence that Nicoletta is called the girl who makes Peppe the Boxeur of Soliti Ignoti fall in love with her.
They were artists from the family, the composer father. Hence his natural ease of being in front of the camera. As for elegance, that is a natural gift. It was not the only one in the Rai of those times: we remember only Bianca Maria Piccinino for all the others. There was no need to browse Burda.
Better than a Reality
All this, however, does not make us imagine that it was a violet, a typical example of the woman with a string of pearls incorporated who jumped out of the boarding school where she learned to play the cello. Her family Time.news speaks of a marriage contracted in the 1960s and followed by separation.
In the following decade she divorced under the Fortuna-Baslini law. Only it was his business, and he kept it to himself. Honor and glory of a television where you did not feel the need to immediately throw yourself in the square. And of a television that may have also been led by the Christian Democrats with the immortal Bernabei, but which looked at the result with good health. You knew how to announce, you announced. Coetera tolle: it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, the important thing is that it catches the mouse.
As for the cats, Mrs. Orsomando must have loved them not a little, so much so that she also dedicated a couple of experiences as a program presenter to the animals. In one case he joined Angelo Lombardi in the guide of “L’Amico degli animali”. Once a viper was brought into the studio, who thought it best to bite the human being closest to her.
Lombardi didn’t flinch: he took out the serum and injected it. Then he resumed as if nothing had happened. Other than reality. Islands scattered across the seven seas, caravans bound for Beijing, presidents of the United States chasing out apprentices, know this: you are nothing in comparison.
And not even you, beautiful young girls who one day appeared at that time, from those screens, to declare with your brazen lexical and phonetic lack of preparation that Italy had changed, and there had been ’68.
When the Third Network was born it was believed that the Miss Good Evening were the emblem of the objectification of women, and therefore should be abolished. The first evening it was thought better than to put a young girl in front of the camera who stared fixedly at the lens and said to everyone: “Hello”. Seh, it grinds it. After a few months and his rivals had regained all the spaces.
Rai announcer of the past
Nicoletta Orsomando resisted, for her part, until 1993. Maybe before reading from the programming sheet she put on her glasses, with an inevitably elegant gesture, but otherwise she always remained. Until the end, no one – and no one – had the courage to contest it. And she left, quiet, retired for having reached the age limit.
But with her, or shortly after, the others also left: not because of inability, but because in the meantime the Professors had landed at Rai to rationalize, save, make efficient and impose the logic of competition and the market.
We doubt that the Professors have won their battle, and not only because of the internal resistance they encountered. In any case, the story of the Miss Good Evening reminds us so much that of Edward R. Murrow, who did not lose his job because of politics but because CBS made the budget rules its own, and set it aside for a handful of auditel points.
Therefore, carried away by nostalgia, we greet Nicoletta Orsomando with the words of Murrow: Good night and good luck. Good luck and good night, ladies and gentlemen. In the blue painted blue.