“I saw Nina fly”: Angelina Mango’s return to the stage

Pay attention: every time you try to imagine freedom as a “space”, you think of it as boundless and open, perhaps naturalistic. As we grow up, however, we understand that freedom is often not a place without borders. But it is a precise environment, perhaps even delimited, where you finally feel like yourself because you can choose. Angelina Mango he learned this early. At 24 years old. Before this tour “Nina sings in theaters”, which marks her returnin 2024 the singer-songwriter was capitalizing on the success of her victory at the Sanremo Festival and participation in Eurovision, when she suddenly decided to stop, canceling the remaining dates. An unexpected step back, followed, after a year of silence and personal flourishing, by the return with the album “caramé”surprisingly released in October 2025.

The new tour in theatres, places chosen ad hoc because they are based on listeningis the concrete form of this restart. And also the stage of the Colosseum Theater in Turin he tells it. The scenography evokes a house. The element that immediately catches the eye is a green bunk bed: the one that the singer-songwriter shared as a child with her brother Filipponow the drummer of his band and to whom he dedicated “Edmund and Lucy“, the place where dreams, nights and secrets have passed. The beginning of the concert has its own ritual: Angelina arrives from the audience, from where she will then emerge at the end of the live, among the people, and immediately starts with “Boredom”, the song with which he won Sanremo and which changed everything. He mentions it and then deconstructs it: it’s not mannerism, it’s an exorcism. From there the setlist, with arrangements all handled by her, supported by a seven-piece band, becomes a path in search of lightness without constraintsthe one she herself had spoken about before the tour: “It’s not the success, the full calendar or the stress that made me ill. What really hurts is not listening to yourself, it’s not feeling free.” Live is the discovery of pure sensations, a love letter to the saving power of music. Mango dances, smiles, has fun, sings, lives literally the scene, he doesn’t cross it.

In “SevenUp” sings “I’m not a star, not even by mistake, I’m a freshman for life”in “Fragile package” talks about the need to “remain human”, vulnerable.Melodrama“, exuberant and liberating, like Rosalìa, and “What do I tell you?“in which it turns into a small tornado. Mango, in several situations, he seems to definitively abandon certain almost martial movements of the beginning, those precise, sharp gesturesto let yourself go into a more instinctive, less controlled presence. There is no longer any need for perfect choreography: the body follows the spirit of the music. The aesthetics also change. Oversize, more anarchic, with a hat or bandanawith an energy reminiscent of the Billie Eilish school. There is room for the light of “Smile“, where the smile becomes an approach to life, and for “letting go”, the writer Alessandro Baricco would say, of “Shoes untied“. But there is no shortage of wounds, starting from the demon who in “Me and me” makes it difficult to inhabit your own skin: “And my body is no longer a body. It takes up space”, he sings while looking at himself in front of a mirror. The concert is meticulous in detail, and this can also be seen from the work on the lights: they never put the artist too much in the foreground and, in several moments, they almost let her dissolve into the shadows, to reiterate that the image must not overpower the music.

Interpret “cosicosicosicosi” with the Valtellina singer-songwriter Henna and we arrive at “Single file”, one of the most intense moments: the story of media “vampires”. who wandered around the house after the death of their father, Pino Mango, looking for news and pain. “Hand grenade” reveals the collapse of expectations: “And I would start from scratch“, and then there is probably the key song of this new artistic phase, “Veil over the eyes“. The poster of “caramé” with at the center the veil that falls when we lose the pure gaze of childhood, but also the mantra that tears him apart: “Now I just want to live“. The people in the room stand up and give her a standing ovation, she responds moved and shouts her name: “Nina”. It’s a moment that moves something inside.

And an image returns. That freedom told by Fabrizio De André in “I saw Nina fly”: a friend, a little girl on the swing, carefreeness while inside and around us the world shouts. The same feeling that seems to inhabit Angelina Mango’s stage today. Because looking at her now one perceives a truth: a girl, even before an artist, in dialogue with herself and her scars. Despite his young age and a repertoire still to be built, he has it a magnetic voice and physical presenceas well as the rare awareness of those who have now understood where their space is. Sometimes it’s not infinite. Sometimes it’s as big as a stage that smells like home. And there, even just for a moment, it really seems possible to see “Nina fly”.

Ladder:
Intro + Boredom
Life must be taken by bites
I and I
We missed the end
Family jewels
Like a child
7up
Fragile package
Melodrama
Aiaiai
Nina sings
What do I tell you?
Edmund and Lucy
Everything in the air
Empty hands
Smile
Shoes untied
So so so so with Henna

My Love
Hand grenade
Single file
Veil over the eyes
Igloos
Carame