Italy removes emphatic ‘Yes!’ from national anthem

December 24, 2025 – 1:57 PM

Basketball – FIBA EuroBasket 2025 – Group Phase – Italy v Georgia – Spyros Kyprianou Athletic Center, Limassol, Cyprus – August 30, 2025 Italy’s players line up during the national anthems before the match (Reuters/Yiannis Kourtoglou/File Photo)

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Before the latest change, the “Brothers of Italy” anthem concluded with: “We are ready to die, We are ready to die, Italy has called! Yes!”

A presidential office source said the modification was not for any political reason but for the sake of purity, removing an addition to the original lyrics.

“Brothers of Italy”, which is also the name of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party, was penned by poet Goffredo Mameli in 1847, before Italy was unified.

While Mameli’s lyrics did not include “Si”, the word figures in the original musical score for the anthem, composed in the same year by Michele Novaro.

—Reporting by Alvise Armellini and Angelo Amante, editing by Philippa Fletcher