Anastacia, the panther, takes the stage: "I love Italians, they love music."

"Sanremo is such a huge media event, I was dazzled," Anastacia admits, thinking back to her first Italian television experience, at the Ariston Theatre in 2001 to introduce the Festival audience to "I'm Outta Love," the cornerstone of a powerful and successful debut album like "Not That Kind," released seven months earlier, whose twenty-fifth anniversary she celebrates tonight on the stage of Sequoie Music Park in Bologna. "The host was Raffaella Carrà, who came to greet me in the dressing room with such familiarity that I felt like I'd known her forever," she recalls. "A fantastic woman who never failed to support me, even hosting me on "Carramba che sorpresa" with a platoon of bare-chested models dancing behind me. Thinking about it, only she could make you do certain things..."

For the anniversary (and to accompany the #NTK25 Tour, which kicked off in March in Barcelona), 'Not That Kind' has been reissued with some special remixes and an Atmos version of 'I'm Outta Love'. The show, however, encompasses the entire output of the Chicago panther, born Anastacia Lyn Newkirk, who calls 'sprock' that blend of soul, pop, and rock that has underpinned a career that has sold thirty million records. In her live performances, she also includes rock covers of Guns N' Roses ('Sweet Child O' Mine') and German band Die Toten Hosen ('Best Days'). "The audience changes every night, especially here," she says. "In their songs, artists like Pino Daniele and Giorgia beautifully express the passion and love the Italian public has for music. And I consider myself fortunate to have worked with great performers like Eros Ramazzotti and Luciano Pavarotti. That's why moving people who live music with their hearts moves me first and foremost."

Anastacia says that music continues to save her life, representing the vital energy that prevents her from taming the beast within. After all, Crohn's disease, which she had operated on as a child, failed to do so, and neither did the cancer, which recurred as an adult. "When you have cancer, a nice dress and a little makeup aren't enough to make you feel good about yourself; you have to feel beauty within," she assures. "But for me, that's no problem, because I feel fabulous both as a woman and as a performer." Her Tina Turner-esque shout, the sometimes caressing, sometimes scathing tones of the classy rocker, are as much a trademark for the fifty-six-year-old heroine of "Freak of Nature" as the life sign tattooed on her back or her nails painted in the most unlikely colors. American to the core, even in excess, and precisely for this reason, to be loved or rejected without ifs or buts.