first hit with the band featured Mina performed an extra-loud, syncopated version of the popular song "Nessuno" ("Nobody"), which she performed at the first rock festival in the Milan Ice Palace in February 1959. Performances of the song on the TV game shows Lascia o raddoppia? and Il musichiere on 1 March and 4 April were hailed by Italian critics. The starlet signed with Elio Gigante, an experienced artist manager. In the following years, he organized her performances in the grand ballrooms of Italy. Her first Italian 1 hit was the up-tempo "Tintarella di luna" ("Moon Tan") in September 1959, which was performed in her first musicarello (musical comedy film), Juke box – Urli d'amore. In late 1959, Matalon had her drop the name Baby Gate in favour of Mina. Growing up (1960–1965) In 1960, Mina made her Festival della canzone italiana in Sanremo debut with two songs. She turned to slow emotional love songs for the first time. The song "È vero" ("It's True") reached No. 8 on the Italian charts. Gino Paoli's song "Il cielo in una stanza" ("The Sky in a Room") marked the beginning of the young singer's transformation from a rock and roll shrieker to a feminine inspiration for cantautori. The idea for the song "Love can grow at any moment at any place" had come to Paoli while lying on a bed and looking at the purple ceiling. The single topped the list of annual sales in Italy and reached the Billboard Hot 100 as "This World We Love In". Video performances of the song were included in the musicarellos Io bacio... tu baci and Appuntamento a Ischia, and in 1990, in the soundtrack of the film Goodfellas. At the 1961 Sanremo song festival, Mina performed two songs. "Io amo, tu ami" ("I Love, You Love") finished fourth and "Le mille bolle blu" ("A Thousand Blue Bubbles") placed fifth. Disappointed with these results, Mina declared her intention of never performing at the Sanremo song festival again. As her songs and movies were already popular abroad, Mina started to tour Spain and Japan, and performed on Venezuelan TV in 1961. Mina performed on Spanish TV and at the Paris Olympia hall at the beginning of 1962. The presentation of her German single "Heißer Sand" on 12 March 1962 on Peter Kraus's TV show caused a boom of 40,000 record sales in ten days in Germany.