Maria Giovanna Elmi (born 25 August 1940, in Rome is an Italian former television announcer, presenter, journalist, actress and singer. Born in Rome, Italy, Elmi attended the faculty of letter at the university, then in 1968 she was employed by

RAI TV (), commercially styled as since 2000 and known until 1954 as (RAI), is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many terrestrial and subscription television channels a ...

as an announcer. Her popularity raised in early seventies, when she hosted the children show ''Il dirigibile'' together with the singer Mal, playing the fairy Azzurrina, from which she inherited the nickname "fatina" (i.e. young fairy in Italian). Elmi hosted two editions of the

Sanremo Music Festival The Sanremo Music Festival ( ), officially the Italian Song Festival (), is the most popular Italian song contest and awards ceremony, held annually in the city of Sanremo, Liguria, organized and broadcast by (RAI). It is the longest-running ...

(in 1977 and 1978). She ranked at first place in two public polls of the most appreciated female television personalities in 1970 () and in 1981 (Abacus). In 1970, Elmi also became a journalist and publicist, collaborating for three years with the newspaper ''

Il Messaggero ''Il Messaggero'' (English: "The Messenger") is an Italian Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper based in Rome, Italy. It has been in circulation since 1878. It is one of the main national newspapers in Italy. History and profile ''Il Messaggero'' ...

'' and later with a large number of magazines and newspapers. In 2005 she took part to the reality show ''

L'isola dei famosi ''L'isola dei famosi'' (; Italian for ''The Celebrity Island'' or ''The island of the famous'') is an Italian Reality television, reality show, first aired on Rai 2 in 2003, before moving to Canale 5 in 2015. This program is the Italian ''Survivor ...

'', ranking third. She considers herself

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

References

External links

*
Maria Giovanna Elmi
at

Discogs Discogs ( ; short for " discographies") is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. Database contents are user-generated, and described in ''T ...

* Italian film actresses Musicians from Rome 1940 births Italian television presenters Italian women singers Participants in Italian reality television series Italian journalists Italian women journalists Living people Italian women television presenters Mass media people from Rome Italian Roman Catholics {{Italy-film-actor-stub