From Ornella to Stefania, to Paola: all the women in Gino Paoli's life

The death of Gino Paoli at the age of 91 closes a crucial chapter in the history of singer-songwriter music and Italian culture. Behind an immense artistic legacy lies a complex, fascinating, and sometimes scandalous private story that fueled both his life and his work.

As he himself confessed: "If I love a woman, it is for life: the reasons I loved her still exist, the beauty remains". For Paoli, women were never just passing presences: they were muses, mothers, friends, loyal companions.

The first to share notoriety with him was Anna Fabbri, whom he married in the early 1960s. From that union, their firstborn, Giovanni, was born in 1964. A figure of rare solidity, Anna was a safe harbor amid the media storm and later welcomed into their home Amanda – the daughter Paoli had out of wedlock – becoming a sort of "second mother" to her. The bourgeois Italy of the time was shaken by his parallel passions.

On June 5, 1961, at the Bussola di Viareggio, a thirty-year-old Paoli, already married, noticed a girl celebrating her 15th birthday: she was Stefania Sandrelli. This led to a clandestine relationship, consumed between motorcycle escapes and furious arguments, culminating in 1964 with the birth of Amanda in Lausanne, in Switzerland, chosen to protect her from the curious and the moralism of the time. In that relationship, the darkest shadow also appeared: in July 1963, overwhelmed by tensions and feeling the distance from Stefania, who was then focused on establishing herself in cinema, Paoli attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest. The bullet stopped one millimeter from his heart and remained encapsulated there for his entire life.

At his hospital bedside during those dramatic days, Anna Fabbri, Stefania Sandrelli, and another essential figure arrived: Ornella Vanoni. With her, born just one day apart, Paoli forged an irreplaceable artistic partnership and one of the most intense and troubled love stories in Italian show business.

For Ornella, he wrote the immortal "Senza fine", conceived by Ricordi to free her from the label of "singer of the underworld" and launch her as a sensual icon. Their passion had to contend with enormous obstacles: he was already married, she was recovering from her marriage (in 1960) to theater impresario Lucio Ardenzi. Despite the wounds, that bond never completely broke, transforming into a deep affection and collaborations that lasted for decades. The “Lady” of Italian music passed away on November 22, 2025, four months before Paoli.

Finally, the definitive anchor: Paola Penzo. Married in 1991, she is the partner who has stood by him throughout the last, very long stretch of his life. Wife and mother of the three younger children of the singer-songwriter (Nicolò, Tommaso, and Francesco), she has always maintained a discreet profile, away from the limelight, while being a pillar of his daily life and work, even co-authoring the lyrics of some songs.

Paoli never truly separated the people he loved: he achieved the small miracle of keeping “his” women united, building an extended family long before the term became commonplace. Together with the beloved Amanda, whom the father looked at with infinite tenderness, all the partners, wives, and lovers of Gino Paoli are the necessary notes of a single, inexhaustible melody: the protagonists of a long, true love story that will continue to resonate.