Orietta Berti. Tradition, Celebrity, and Contemporary Media

The chapter analyses the long career of Orietta Berti, an icon of Italian popular music, through the lenses of media studies, cultural studies, and celebrity studies. Its aim is to understand how the singer has built and maintained a solid public image, balancing tradition, authenticity, and renewal, and how the media — including social networks — have contributed to defining her role as a pop icon. The analysis integrates classical theoretical works with more recent contributions concerning the relationship between authenticity and celebrity, and between mediatization and presentational media. The objective is to explore the longevity of the ‘Orietta Berti’ persona as a strategy of identity continuity and mediated intimacy, able to move through technological transitions and cultural transformations without losing recognizability, while maintaining her own ‘celebrity capital’.