Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In decades past, the FT used to award an imaginary annual Oscar for the year’s best currency. The winner for 1959 was the Italian lira. That year a teenager from Cremona scored her first major hit, a rock-and-roll twirler called “Tintarella di luna”. She was Mina Mazzini, later to become Italy’s best-selling singer.Like the lira, Mina had her ups and downs. But unlike the obsolete currency, she endures. Now 84, the “Tigress of Cremona”, so named for her forceful voice and stage presence, lives in Switzerland, home of luxurious discretion. She hasn’t played a concert since 1978 and doesn’t give interviews. Yet the albums keep coming. Each one is a hit in Italy while being roundly ignored by the Anglosphere. So far as I can tell, the FT was the only English-language newspaper to cover last year’s Te amo come un pazzo.Gassa d’Amante is her 76th studio album. Like its predecessor, it has been helmed by her musician son, Massimiliano Pani. He was born out of wedlock in 1963, which provoked a huge scandal. The Vatican tried to torpedo Mina’s career, but she faced down the forces of reaction. Such indomitability, with an octave-spanning voice to match, has placed her in the top rank of European pop divas.The cover of her new album shows her as an immense figurehead on a flagship galleon. Its title refers to a type of sailor’s knot. The knotty topic at hand is love. The songs are about amorous entanglements and undoings, sung by Mina with feeling and passages of undiminished power.In “Non smetto di aspettarti”, she vociferates at maximum volume about an absent lover amid politely brushed drums and tinkling ivories, like a grande dame creating a scene during teatime at the Ritz. Other songs mildly modernise her sound. “Senza farmi male”, about another absent lover, is electronic rock with an old-school key change and a squiggly synthesiser solo. “Amami e basta” is a moody ballad with a bombastic streak.The music is sumptuously textured and stolidly structured. Mina is the principal attraction. The vigour of her singing is affecting, but so are the times when she sounds her age. Her low timbre, crumbling at the edges, is unmistakably octogenarian at those points. The evidence of the years adds to the sense of momentousness. The world turns, times change — and Mina sings on.★★★☆☆‘Gassa d’Amante’ is released by PDU
