The Sanremo Music Festival 1970 (), officially the 20th Italian Song Festival (), was the 20th annual Sanremo Music Festival, held at the Sanremo Casino in Sanremo between 26 and 28 February 1970. It was organised by the company Due Erre and broadcast by (RAI). The shows were presented by Nuccio Costa, Enrico Maria Salerno and Princess Ira von Fürstenberg.

Each song was performed twice by both Italian and foreign artists. The winning song was "" written by Luciano Beretta, Miki Del Prete and Adriano Celentano, and performed by both Celentano and Claudia Mori.

Format In 1969, the municipality of Sanremo assumed management of the festival's venue, the Sanremo Casino, taking over from Società ATA who had organised the festival since 1958, after their concession ended and the planned public auction for the casino's management was suspended. Despite initial plans to organise the event themselves, the municipality eventually accepted an offer from Gianni Ravera, who served as the festival's artistic director from 1962 to 1968, and , the former president of ATA, to organise the event through their newly established company Due Erre. The two agreed to pay the municipality fifty million lire and cover all expenses associated with organising the event.

In a meeting that took place on 26 April between the municipality and (RAI), a decision was made to move the dates of the event to the end of February to avoid potential interference with RAI's musical variety show Canzonissima.

In addition to the three live shows on 26, 27 and 28 February 1970, a string of events took place at the Teatro Ariston in the contest's lead-up. On 22 February a show celebrating the festival's twentieth anniversary took place, was hosted by Daniele Piombi and featured performances of winning songs from previous editions. Shows on the following two days featured the artists Johnny Hallyday, The New Christy Minstrels, Roberto Carlos, Joe Dassin and Joe Cocker, and on 25 February, the Italian premiere of the film Easy Rider took place.

Voting system The vote in each show was conducted by twenty-four juries formed by newspapers across Italy, each with twenty-five members located in their respective newspaper offices. In the first two nights, jury members gave one vote to seven different songs, while in the final they gave one vote to three songs.

Competing entries 303 songs were submitted for the competition. The festival's organisers, Gianni Ravera and , formed a special commission composed of ten members including themselves, Renato Griffan, Rodolfo D'Intino, Marcello De Martino, Enrico Gramigna and Luciano Pedrocchi. The other three members were women, included in the selection process to represent the music taste of the general public. The commission was tasked with narrowing down the list of submissions to twenty-four. Eventually, twenty-six were selected to compete.

A restriction was imposed on the number of foreign artists allowed to compete in the competition this year, as requested by the Unione cantanti italiana (UCI), which limited the amount to only four, of which two were required to reside in Italy.

The Castrocaro Music Festival was used to select two newcomer artists automatically given a spot among the festival's list of competing artists, after a one year break from being tied to the competition. The winners of the 1969 edition were and .

+Competing entries Song Artist 1 Artist 2 Songwriter(s) Conductor(s) "" Rocky Roberts "" Rita Pavone "" Paolo Mengoli "" Tony Renis Sergio Leonardi "" Pino Donaggio Sandie Shaw "" Adriano Celentano Claudia Mori "" Domodossola Rosanna Fratello "" Ornella Vanoni I Camaleonti "" Fausto Leali Carmen Villani "" Donatello Dik Dik Natale Massara "" Michele "" Marisa Sannia Gianni Nazzaro "" Sergio Endrigo Iva Zanicchi Sergio Endrigo "" Nicola Di Bari Ricchi e Poveri "" Little Tony Patty Pravo "" Gens "" Renato Rascel "" Dori Ghezzi "" "" Nada Rosalino "" Caterina Caselli Nino Ferrer "" Gigliola Cinquetti Bobby Solo "" Tony Del Monaco Claudio Villa "" Luciano Tajoli Mal "" Anna Identici Antoine "" Orietta Berti Mario Tessuto

Shows The festival consisted of three shows held between 26 and 28 February 1970. The first two nights consisted of thirteen songs performed twice, in which seven qualified from each show, creating a final of fourteen songs performed twice. Performances could be accompanied by the orchestra in the venue and with backing vocals provided by the vocal group . All shows were presented by Nuccio Costa with the actors Enrico Maria Salerno and Princess Ira von Fürstenberg. The television production was directed by Enrico Moscatelli.

The song "" composed by served as the festival's theme.

In the first two nights, the songs were presented in groups of three. A draw took place on 24 February to decide the shows' running order, including the order artists would perform in. The final was split into two halves, with the first half broadcast internationally and the second half broadcast only in Italy, both featuring every song performed once. The American group The New Christy Minstrels performed a recap of the competing songs in the final. The group was initially slated to perform recaps for all three shows, but they refused to attend the first two nights after learning their performances wouldn't be broadcast on television.

First night The first night took place on 26 February 1970 at 21:15 CET. Thirteen songs performed and seven were selected for the final. The actor Nino Manfredi made a guest appearance performing the song "" at the end of the show.

During the show, Adriano Celentano stopped his performance of "" a minute in after making a mistake with the song's lyrics. In his second attempt, he made another mistake and stopped singing temporarily, but signaled to the conductor to keep the song going and finished the performance without any further errors.

+First night – 26 February 1970 Song Artist 1 Artist 2 Points Place 1 "" Rossano Dori Ghezzi colspan=2 2 "" Tony Del Monaco Claudio Villa colspan=2 3 "" Michele Lucia Rizzi colspan=2 4 "" Gens Emiliana colspan=2 5 "" Patty Pravo Little Tony 472 1 6 "" Renato Rascel Pio colspan=2 7 "" Mario Tessuto Orietta Berti 333 7 8 "" I Camaleonti Ornella Vanoni 433 3 9 "" Antoine Anna Identici 352 4 10 "" Adriano Celentano Claudia Mori 466 2 11 "" Sergio Leonardi Tony Renis 342 6 12 "" Gigliola Cinquetti Bobby Solo 343 5 13 "" Pino Donaggio Sandie Shaw colspan=2

Second night The second night took place on 27 February 1970 at 21:15 CET. Thirteen songs performed and seven were selected for the final.

A small incident occurred when Rita Pavone knocked over her microphone during her performance of "".

+Second night – 27 February 1970 Song Artist 1 Artist 2 Points Place 1 "" Marisa Sannia Gianni Nazzaro 372 3 2 "" Valeria Mongardini Rita Pavone colspan=2 3 "" Donatello Dik Dik colspan=2 4 "" I Ragazzi della Via Gluck Paolo Mengoli colspan=2 5 "" Nicola Di Bari Ricchi e Poveri 458 2 6 "" Domodossola Rosanna Fratello colspan=2 7 "" Luciano Tajoli Mal 318 6 8 "" Rosalino Nada 362 5 9 "" Il Supergruppo Rocky Roberts colspan=2 10 "" Fausto Leali Carmen Villani 312 7 11 "" Caterina Caselli Nino Ferrer 369 4 12 "" Francesco Banti Dino Drusiani colspan=2 13 "" Sergio Endrigo Iva Zanicchi 480 1

Final night

The final night took place on 28 February 1970 at 21:00 CET. The fourteen songs admitted to the final were performed again and a winner was chosen. Guest appearances included the Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan and the American group The New Christy Minstrels, who performed a recap of the competing songs in the final.

The winning song was "" written by Luciano Beretta, Miki Del Prete and Adriano Celentano, who performed the song in addition to his wife Claudia Mori. In second place was the song "" written by Mogol and Nicola Di Bari, performed by Di Bari and the group Ricchi e Poveri, with "" written and performed by Sergio Endrigo, and also performed by Iva Zanicchi placing third. All six performances of the top three songs were repeated at the end of the show.

Patty Pravo received the Giorgio Berti award given to the best performance by a competing artist at the festival.

+Final night – 28 February 1970 Song Artist 1 Artist 2 Points Place 1 "" Marisa Sannia Gianni Nazzaro 44 11 2 "" Sergio Endrigo Iva Zanicchi 296 3 3 "" Tony Renis Sergio Leonardi 28 13 4 "" Luciano Tajoli Mal 52 9 5 "" Little Tony Patty Pravo 133 5 6 "" Caterina Caselli Nino Ferrer 24 14 7 "" Ornella Vanoni I Camaleonti 233 4 8 "" Orietta Berti Mario Tessuto 52 9 9 "" Nicola Di Bari Ricchi e Poveri 309 2 10 "" Anna Identici Antoine 61 8 11 "" Fausto Leali Carmen Villani 37 12 12 "" Gigliola Cinquetti Bobby Solo 96 6 13 "" Nada Rosalino 70 7 14 "" Adriano Celentano Claudia Mori 344 1

Broadcasts Local broadcast The final was broadcast on Programma Nazionale (television) and Secondo Programma (radio) beginning at 21:00 CET. The first two nights were broadcast on Secondo Programma (television) and Secondo Programma (radio) at 21:15 CET. The final was broadcast on television in Italy to an estimated 25 million viewers.

International broadcast The first half of the final was broadcast via the Eurovision network in other countries. Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.

+International broadcasters of the Sanremo Music Festival 1970 Country Broadcaster Channel(s) Commentator(s) Radio Rivadavia Cacho Fontana Nine Network GTV-9 Rede Tupi TV Tupi Rio de Janeiro TV Tupi São Paulo TV Brasília TV Paraná TV Piratini UCTV RÚV RTP RTP TVR TVE TVE 1 José Luis Uribarri JRT

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