Renzo Arbore turns 89: when he met Boncompagni, love with Mariangela Melato, 16 secrets

The showman of "L'altra domenica" and "Indietro tutta" was born in Foggia on June 24, 1937

Corriere Della Sera

By Arianna Ascione

June 24, 2026

Actor in a spaghetti-western

Cinematographic anecdote: in 1971 Arbore played a sheriff in Demofilo Fidani's spaghetti-western Showdown for a Badma.

Singer-songwriter, radio host, clarinetist, showman, author, television host, director... These are the thousand faces of Renzo Arbore, who turns 89 on June 24. Perhaps not everyone knows that Arbore, born in Foggia on June 24, 1937, coined a very curious name to define his fans: the "Arborigens". And this is not the only curiosity about him.

Originally from Foggia, Renzo Arbore went to visit Padre Pio several times, "but it always ended badly," he revealed to Aldo Cazzullo in an interview: "They asked him if I should be a lawyer or an artist, and he, who didn't want to be treated as a fortune teller, replied: 'Facisse 'cchi vole!'" One day he brought Pippo Baudo to him: "And he put us at the door. Padre Pio asked Pippo if he had come out of faith or curiosity. He was sincere: out of curiosity. "Then you can go away!" replied the saint.

The son of a dentist, his father wanted him to follow the same path as him. But the young Lorenzo (Arbore's real name at the registry office is Lorenzo Giovanni Arbore) enrolled in Law, at the University of Naples Federico II. "And I didn't even become a lawyer. After graduation, Dad asked me what you want to do? I answered: I would like to be an artist. He gave me a year to try, it was an ultimatum, a bet," he told the Corriere.

For a scene from "FF.SS." - That is: "... what did you take me to do above Posillipo if you don't love me anymore?" (1983 film) Federico Fellini was offended: "It was terrible. He liked the Pap'occhio. The next film, FF.SS. Federico Fellini South Story, was supposed to be a tribute. We showed it to him. But he felt sorry for the scene where the script flew out of the window on his way to pee. He told us to our faces: "We're not there. The best thing is the finale with Rota's music". A stab in the heart."

The great love of Arbore's life was the actress Mariangela Melato, who passed away in 2013. "She was the most important woman, she gave me the inner reason, the deepest meaning of my personal life. We thought we were getting married, then artistic commitments divide for many reasons: she went to America, I stayed in Rome, we moved away and we found ourselves in recent years with a new fire of passion absolutely burning». The failed marriage is still a regret today: "It was the big mistake of my life. My mother had already prepared the documents for me."

When Mara Venier (his partner at the time) was first proposed to Domenica In, in the nineties, Renzo Arbore gave her only one piece of advice: "He usually cooked at home, I was his helper... I peeled potatoes, cut onions, things like that - Venier told Corriere in 2021 -. One day, while we were in the kitchen, he looked at me: I had jeans, a T-shirt, I was barefoot and with my hair tied up. He told me: "You have to do Domenica In like this, showing yourself how you are in everyday life. If you succeed, it's done". It was his only advice."

In 1991 Renzo Arbore founded the Italian Orchestra, to give new life to Neapolitan song. "For thirty years, from 1991 to 2021, I brought the Italian Orchestra to life, the longest-lived stable orchestra ever in the world," he told Corriere della Sera in 2022. Not even Duke Ellington, no orchestra has lasted that long. We have calculated that by doing sixty, seventy concerts a year, in three decades we have done more than fifteen hundred concerts. From Australia to the Soviet Union, up to today's Russia. And then North America, South America, China, Japan, France, Spain, New York we don't talk about. But this thing has been devoured by television fame. We often remember the first great concert at Radio City Music Hall in '93 when we sold out for days. Then we went around the world, bringing Italy, but it was no longer so newsworthy. What we are proud of is having revived the great Neapolitan song by dusting it off, adapting it. Never mortifying it in the pursuit of ephemeral and often vulgar fashions."