Fascist Floorfillers: The disco album made by Benito Mussolini’s granddaughter
It turns out that sharing the surname with one of Europe’s most infamous fascist dictators need not impede a fairly successful glamour and acting career.
While the odd remaining relatives of Führer Adolf Hitler have reportedly vowed never to have children and sever the Nazi tyrant’s bloodline for good, Italy’s Il Duce Benito Mussolini’s familial legacy hasn’t quite kept the same low profile.
Far from keeping their head down, the father of fascism’s offspring all enjoyed elevated careers among the political and cultural elite after the war, across film journalism, radio presentation, and, fourth and youngest child, Romano Mussolini, moderately successful jazz and painting pursuits.
In 1962, Romano’s first child with his wife and singer Maria Scicolone, was born. Following in the footsteps of her celebrity aunt, Scicolone’s Hollywood sister Sophia Loren, Alessandra Mussolini sought a similar career in Italy’s film industry, appearing in several films across the 1970s and ‘80s, including the Golden Globe-winning A Special Day, and, curiously enough, playing a Jewish rescuing nun in war thriller The Assisi Underground. Alessandra proved to be a top drawer in the modelling world too, featured twice on the cover of Playboy’s European edition in Italy and Germany.
Yet, pop too was beckoning. Reportedly, Alessandra and her mother visited Japan in 1982 and were approached to lend vocals to a mooted commercial, Scicolone nodding in the affirmative straight away on her daughter’s behalf despite Alessandra’s zero singing history. Soon enough, she found herself signed to Japan’s Alfa Records with labelmates Yellow Magic Orchestra, enjoying Italian music veteran Cristiano Malgioglio’s songcraft touch, and a couple of tracks arranged by polyphonic synth whizz Hiroshi Sato.
Only released in Japan, 1982’s Amore peddles in standard AOR gloss, all bubbly city pop shimmer and watered-down disco that exists little more than a curio footnote of the Mussolini family tree. As far as can be gleaned, Alessandra’s attempt at a pop career is the only example of a dictator’s grandchild even remotely orbiting the mainstream charts, especially as one notorious as the Italian ‘Dux’.
Needless to say, her music aspirations never took off. Alessandra’s better known now as carrying her grandfather’s political torch by hopping around various right-wing parties in Italy’s two legislative chambers as well as the European Parliament, adopting a chaotic yo-yoing support/rejection of LGBTQ+ rights and indulging in frequent apologia for Italy’s fascist past.
The legacy of her grandfather is clearly a sore point, calling Jim Carrey a “bastard” on X in 2019 after the comedian had sketched a picture of the fascist despot and his mistress, Clara Petacci, hung upside down in the manner their bodies were publicly paraded in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto in the final months of the war.
Naturally, such a rare and near-impossible-to-find record, coupled with its infamous surname, piques the interest of all the weird and wonderful collectors out there with far too much money. Snapping up a copy in 2000, Italian student Marcello Mangano forked out a whopping 10million lire to own his very own Amore LP, coming to over £30,000 in today’s money.
