@ craz07: Sorry, I didn't mean to diss the event itself, although I don't seem to belong to the group "pretty much everyone". It looks like the people are having a good time which is always nice. What I meant, have they learned the lyrics by rote without really knowing what they sing? Don't get me wrong here either, even opera singers do that if they haven't studied the language they're supposed to sing. Faking a song is relatively easy, it's mostly about pronouncing the vowels correctly and getting the intonation right. Plus you can compare your performance with the original singer. Reading a song text in a foreign language as a poem or a speech is much harder. Not to mention having a conversation, which involves understanding the other party as well as making oneself understood.
@ Widewing You may be right about the younger Italians, but as I said even the younger ones working in cafe's and restaurants spoke very little if any English, or any other foreign language. I found that rather confusing, one would suppose that in a small town where there's the helicopter Training Academy of AgustaWestland there'd be a constant flow of wealthy foreigners to be served...
