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Music / Cristina D'Avena

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Cristina D'Avena (born July 6th, 1964) is an Italian singer, well-known for her alternative theme songs in the Italian dubs of animated series for Mediaset channels.

Nearly all the Italian kids born in the 80's, 90's, and 2000's grew up with her voice. She has sung the opening songs of over 700 animated series, and listing them all would be impossibile. This lasted until the late 2000s, as in the 2010s Italy moved away from their long Alternative Foreign Theme Song tradition, and started to use the original theme songs or simply Italian translations of them.

Among her most famous theme songs, there are Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Attacker You!, Little Pollon, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Cat's Eye, and Ai Shite Night. For the Western cartoon series, the most notable are probably her several theme songs of The Smurfs (1981), which changes opening every season in the Italian version.

Due to the popularity of Ai Shite Night and Cristina's theme song, the anime got an Italian live action sequel with the title Love Me Licia where D'Avena herself plays the main character. After the end of the Licia series in 1988, she also starred as the main character in another sitcom (originally titled Arriva Cristina) where she played a fictional version of herself, which lasted until the end of 1991.

Most of her songs are published in the Fivelandia compilation series, which has 22 albums.

For her male counterpart, see Giorgio Vanni.

Some of the theme songs sung by Cristina D'Avena:

    open/close all folders 

     Released in the 80's 

     Released in the 90's 

     Released in the 2000's 

     Released in the 2010s 

Anime

Her works provide examples of:

  • '80s Hair: She used to have this in the early 80s, at the beginning of her theme songs career, but grew out of it in a few years. Hardly anyone remembers her with her hair now.
  • The Ace: She played this role in both the Licia series and the Cristina series. In both shows, she's the sweet, smart, beautiful protagonist and wonderful singer who is adored by all the other characters. This is probably due to her being already an idol to the Italian children (because of her theme songs), and kids need role models.
    • As Licia, who is based on Yakko from Ai Shite Night, she's a flawless girl, and Yakko's little flaws from the anime are removed. Also, early seasons treat her singing skills as Hidden Depths, while in later seasons she is a famous singer along with her boyfriend.
    • As Cristina in Arriva Cristina and following seasons, she plays the main character... As Herself. While a slightly more realistic and quirky character than Licia, the character "Cristina" is still portrayed as a popular singer, a great student, a kind leader to her friends, and in the first season, all her male friends are secretly in love with her.
  • Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The queen of the Italian theme songs for children. For thirty years, the Italian localization replaced the theme songs of most animated series (especially anime, but plenty of Western cartoons as well) with completely different songs sung by Cristina D'Avena. You can find Cristina D'Avena's "modern" versions even of the anime that already had other different Italian theme songs performed by other singers.
  • Bait-and-Switch Credits: The lyrics of the Expository Theme Tune (not written by D'Avena herself, who is just the singer) are occasionally inaccurate, often based on the first few episodes or vague descriptions of the main characters.
  • Bragging Theme Tune: Most of her theme songs, especially the ones with a Protagonist Title, are about how awesome the main character is.
  • invokedCelebrity Voice Actor: She voiced Beatrice in Over the Garden Wall, Smurfwillow in Smurfs: The Lost Village, the narrator in Thomas & Friends: The Great Race, and the Fairy Godmother in Playmobil: The Movie. She also provided the singing voices of the title characters in Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel and Magical Emi, the Magic Star.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Cristina's theme songs are largely associated with animated series dubbed by Milan's voice actors, since in the 90s and 2000s all the animated series with Cristina's theme songs were dubbed in Milan. For her younger fans, it's odd to find out that several of her theme songs in the 80s (though not all of them) were used for animated series dubbed in Rome, and the voice actors were very different.
    • She has no male counterpart in the '80s (being the only prominent singer for Mediaset theme songs), and many people assume Giorgio Vanni has always been her Spear Counterpart since the '90s. But for most of the 90's, the male singers for Mediaset theme songs were Marco Destro and Enzo Draghi. Giorgio Vanni started singing for Mediaset only in 1999, and was mostly active throughout the 2000s.
  • Expository Theme Tune: The lyrics of her theme songs usually describe the main charcater(s) or the premise of the show.
  • Former Child Star: When she was a child, she sang "Il Valzer del Moscerino" ("The Waltz of the Midge") and several other songs at the children's song festival Zecchino d'Oro. Her entire adult career involves singing children's songs.
  • Gratuitous English: Rarely in her older works, but once Giorgio Vanni came into the picture, it became common to insert random English lines in the otherwise Italian lyrics. The Pokémon theme songs are good examples, where they even changed the third season's title to "Always Pokémon".
  • Male Band, Female Singer:
    • When she plays herself in the sitcom Arriva Cristina and its sequels. She's the lead vocalist and all the other members of her band are guys.
    • Zig-zagged in Love Me Licia. While the Bee Hive was supposed to be an all-male band (as it was in the anime), Cristina's character Licia eventually becomes the female vocalist who sings duets with her boyfriend Mirko, the other singer. She even has some solo songs with the band.
  • Replaced the Theme Tune: If the animated show has many seasons, all the seasons usually get their own different Italian theme songs, combined with New Season, New Name. Her five theme songs of Sailor Moon and her nine theme songs of The Smurfs (1981) are good examples. This also applies to Cristina's own live-action shows: both the Licia series and the Cristina series have four different theme songs each, always sung by Cristina, obviously.
  • Spear Counterpart:
    • In the late 80's and the 90's, she had Enzo Draghi, who gained prominence after dubbing the singing voice of Go, the lead singer in Ai Shite Night and the Italian live sequel Love Me Licia, and performing many duets with Cristina in the latter. Since then, he has performed several Italian theme songs for Mediaset (Lupin III, Ronin Warriors, Street Sharks) and composed many others.
    • Marco Destro performed several theme songs for Mediaset series in the 90's, including X-Men: The Animated Series, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, and a duet with Cristina D'Avena in the second opening of Captain Tsubasa.
    • Starting in 1999, she got a stable male counterpart in Giorgio Vanni, who has also become the most famous and the longest-lasting one. Throughout the 2000s, Giorgio sang many theme songs for anime aimed at boys (Dragon Ball, Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Case Closed), leaving to Cristina the theme songs for series more targeted towards girls or children. Occasionally, they join their forces and sing a duet for the same series.
  • Spoiler Opening: Her theme songs generally use footage from random episodes of the anime, and often end up spoilering important scenes. Exaggerated in the first season of Sailor Moon, where the lyrics state that the title character is the "princess of a faraway kingdom'' while showing footage of Princess Serenity.
  • Theme Tune Rap: The third season of the Cristina series (with the title "Cri Cri"), has a theme song which is partly pop, partly rap. Quite odd, since rap is not exactly Cristina D'Avena's style.
  • Title Theme Tune: As a rule, her theme songs repeat several times the show's title in the chorus.
  • Truncated Theme Tune: For years, the Italian openings had a length of about 2 minutes when airing on TV. Around 2003, the standard format became 1 minute, and many 2-minute theme songs were abruptly shortened to fit the new format.
  • What Song Was This Again?: Many of her theme songs from the 80's were translated and adapted for the Spanish, French, and German localizations. However, it often happened that some of her songs' melodies (usually composed by Ninni Carucci) were later used for completely different shows in other countries. Just a few examples:

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Hello! Lady Lynn (ITA/JPN)

The manga ''Lady'' by Yoko Hanabusa was adapted into two anime series - ''Lady Lady'' (1987) and ''Hello! Lady Lynn'' (1988). <br>The Japanese opening of ''Hello! Lady Lynn'' was sung by Kaori Moritani, while the Italian one was sung by Cristina D'Avena.<br><br>As part of DubNameChange, Lynn's name was changed to Milly. The series title was also changed from ''Hello! Lady Lynn'' to ''Milly - Un giorno dopo l'altro''.

Example of:
Alternative Foreign Theme Song

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Hello! Lady Lynn (ITA/JPN)

The manga ''Lady'' by Yoko Hanabusa was adapted into two anime series - ''Lady Lady'' (1987) and ''Hello! Lady Lynn'' (1988). <br>The Japanese opening of ''Hello! Lady Lynn'' was sung by Kaori Moritani, while the Italian one was sung by Cristina D'Avena.<br><br>As part of DubNameChange, Lynn's name was changed to Milly. The series title was also changed from ''Hello! Lady Lynn'' to ''Milly - Un giorno dopo l'altro''.

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