Toto Cutugno, an Italian singer and songwriter whose 1983 hit music “L’Italiano” grew to become a worldwide sensation and was nonetheless vastly common many years later, died on Tuesday in Milan. He was 80.
His longtime supervisor, Danilo Mancuso, mentioned the reason for Mr. Cutugno’s loss of life, at San Raffaele Hospital, was most cancers.
In a profession that started when he was in his late teenagers, Mr. Cutugno offered greater than 100 million albums worldwide.
“He was capable of construct melodies that remained caught within the viewers’s thoughts and coronary heart,” Mr. Mancuso, who had labored with Mr. Cutugno for 20 years, mentioned in a cellphone interview. “The refrains of his hottest songs are so melodic.”
Mr. Cutugno’s profession started with a stint, first as a drummer after which as a pianist, with Toto e i Tati, a small native band in Northern Italy. He quickly branched out into songwriting.
His expertise for writing memorable songs earned him collaborations with well-known French singers, like Joe Dassin, for whom he wrote “L’été Indien” and “Et si Tu N’Existais pas,” and Dalida, with whom he wrote the disco hit “Monday, Tuesday … Laissez-Moi Danser.” He additionally wrote songs for the French pop star Johnny Hallyday and for famed Italian singers like Domenico Modugno, Adriano Celentano, Gigliola Cinquetti and Ornella Vanoni. Worldwide stars like Celine Dion sang his songs as effectively.
However Mr. Cutugno additionally discovered success singing his personal compositions, first with Albatros. a disco band, which took third place on the Sanremo Pageant of Italian Music in 1976. He then started a solo profession and garnered his first nationwide recognition in Italy in 1980, when he received the pageant with “Solo Noi.”
He returned to the pageant three years later with “L’Italiano.” He completed in fifth place, however the music, a hymn to a rustic straining to rebuild after World Struggle II — marked by symbols of Italy like espresso, the Fiat Seicento and a president who had fought as a partisan throughout the battle — grew to become tremendously common. It’s nonetheless considered one of Italy’s best-known songs, performed on tv and at avenue festivals throughout the nation, in addition to a nostalgic reminder of their homeland for expatriates elsewhere.
The music’s success paved the way in which for a world profession: Mr. Cutugno went on to tour over time in the USA, Europe, Turkey and Russia.
“Russia was his second homeland,” mentioned Mr. Mancuso, his supervisor. “The one Western leisure that Russian televisions broadcast on the time was the Sanremo music pageant, and Toto was typically on, and was appreciated.”
He added that Mr. Cutugno’s nostalgic tunes had been paying homage to the musical kinds of Japanese Europe, and particularly Russia, which made them immediately acquainted to these audiences.
In 2019, Mr. Cutugno’s ties to Russia obtained him into bother with some Ukrainian politicians, who needed to cease him from performing in Kyiv, the nation’s capital. Mr. Cutugno denied that he supported Russia in its aggression in opposition to Ukraine and famous that he had rejected a reserving in Crimea after Russia reclaimed it in 2014. He finally did carry out in Kyiv.
In 1990, Mr. Cutugno received the Eurovision Music Pageant. He was considered one of solely three Italians to have performed so — the others had been Ms. Cinquetti in 1964 and the rock band Maneskin in 2021. His successful music, “Insieme: 1992” (“Collectively: 1992”), was a ballad devoted to the European Union and its political integration. That very same 12 months, Ray Charles agreed to sing an English-language model of a music by Mr. Cutugno on the Sanremo pageant; Mr. Cutugno referred to as the collaboration “the best skilled satisfaction” of his lifetime.
Mr. Cutugno, who was identified for his emotional guitar taking part in and for shaking his longish black hair when he sang, additionally had a stint as a tv presenter in Italy.
Toto Cutugno was born Salvatore Cutugno on July 7, 1943, within the small city of Tendola, close to Fosdinovo, within the mountains of Italy’s northwest between the areas of Tuscany and Liguria. His father, Domenico Cutugno, was a Sicilian Navy marshal, and his mom, Olga Mariani, was a homemaker.
He went to secondary faculty within the metropolis of La Spezia, the place he grew up, and took non-public music classes that included piano and accordion.
He’s survived by his spouse, Carla Cutugno; his son, Niko; and two youthful siblings, Roberto and Rosanna Cutugno.
