Singers From Italy

"I started out in the 1980s singing “Lei Verrà” in piano bars. It was one of the songs that gave me the chance to start my musical career. The news of his death is shocking. Mango will always be remembered as a great artist, because death cannot silence a voice and a song."

"I have always respected Mango, a virtuoso and decent singer, always on stage performing his art, right up to the end."

"Mango's death is one of the most touching moments I can remember. An artist who feels ill on stage, apologises to the audience for the disturbance before dying is absolutely incredible. Of course, Mango's style was far from mine, but I wanted to celebrate the person, the artist who was true to himself until the very last minute, with incredible respect for his audience."

"I didn't know him very well personally. I met him a few times, but I was enchanted by his talent and his unique voice. I saw many of his concerts. Once, at the Sistina in Rome, I was in the audience and at the end his brother Armando, whom I knew better, approached me and took me to his dressing room to meet him. I went in and saw him putting his things in a bag. He smiled at me and shook my hand with simplicity and warmth. My village is 19 km from his, which made him my closest idol. I adore his songs, his inimitable style, his notes that pierce the glass of my soul like diamonds."

"But why, in Italy, does a great artist have to die before he is recognised?"

"One of the most beautiful voices in the Mediterranean."

"He was a generous artist. He had a kind heart and exceptional sensitivity, as all of Italy saw when he felt ill on stage. He was a true Lucanian, a different kind of artist with a unique quality that cannot be found even in other great artists."

"If you listen to Mango's records now, you realise that he is a world number one."

"Mango was a unique case in Italian pop music: he was able to combine refined melodies with a touch of vocal experimentalism and a sprinkling of ethnic influences, without losing sight of rock or singer-songwriter music, genres from which he always carefully avoided drawing any effects, chords or practices that were in any way predictable."

"Metaphorically speaking, one could say that Mango plays the part of an elf who moves nimbly and stealthily in a complex architectural environment, without knocking over the crystal glassware whose exact location only he knows, in a very pictorial and never banal vocal-instrumental ensemble. In his case, one can speak of “a voice that becomes an instrument with special modulations”."

"My mother revealed what they found so extraordinary about my belly button: "They like it because it's a Bolognese belly button.""

"Siempre voto comunista."

"I will die without knowing. On my tombstone, I will write: ‘Why did gay people like me so much?’[3]"

"(About Mina) When I was asked to celebrate her birthday, I thought about the value of the present and the past, and I realised that the imperfect or recent past tenses are not suitable for her. The right tense is the present indicative."

"Mina was not, but she is. Mina did not “leave a mark”, but she leaves one every day. [4]"

"I'm glad I didn't get big-headed, I have a lot of self-irony. You have to be at peace with yourself to do this job."

"I would like to know why I, raised by a single mother, couldn't have a child as a single woman! I even thought about becoming Spanish."

"Raffaella Carrà was one of the symbols of Italian television, perhaps its most beloved personality. She will be missed by millions of viewers who loved her for her style and by all those who, like me, had the opportunity to know her and work with her. I loved her very much. With her programmes, she was able to speak to very different generations, having the ability to always keep up with the times and never resorting to vulgarity."

"(About Putin and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine) He, with all his potential, with all the good things he has done for Russia, with this sense of peace he has sown for many years, now forces his people to cross a country called Ukraine with tanks, guns, rifles, and children fleeing with their mothers. [...] We cannot remain indifferent in the face of this sowing of death. We need life, we need peace. Instead of firing cannons, throw bread and medicine to those in need."

"[About the wedding that never took place with Al Bano] There has been a lot of talk about it, but in reality, I never asked for it. Only at one point, about ten years ago, was it considered. Al Bano was planning his life and asked me, then it all fell through, but it wasn't a big deal. Of course, I would have liked it, marriage was part of my life plans, that's how I thought my life would be, I had the example of my family, not because other families aren't good, far from it... And then my horizons broadened, but nothing has changed."

"They asked me to do Grande Fratello [Big Brother] in all editions. But I like staying at home, I don't like socializing, being cooped up doesn't scare me. In the end, I'm not even afraid of living with others. However, my image, my relationship with my image, is not straightforward, so being filmed 24 hours a day... Perhaps, though, in the end it would be a form of shock therapy: that's how it was with flying, after all, I got over it by flying."

"I was having dinner at Il Dollaro, a restaurant in Milan that cost 660 lire, the equivalent of one dollar. Instead of spaghetti, the waiter brought a guitar and started singing. “What a voice!” I thought. It was Al Bano. During the day he worked at Breda, in the evening he waited tables. I told him to come to Rai the next morning."

"(About Vladimir Putin) I have supported him since before he was in the spotlight. He is a great man. He has a religious sense of life. He rules with an iron fist, and I see nothing wrong with that."

"History defends us, and will continue to defend us in the future, but we can't keep thinking only about Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. We're tied to memories, to our open-air museum."

"We're selling everything now. From Perugina to Fiat, there's nothing left here. Are we Italians, or do we just say we are?"

"Putin has stood by the West even in the worst of times. He has always told us: I am your friend. However, if we are ungrateful and fail to understand his policy in Ukraine, then it is only right that he should say to us: be careful, I have Russia in my hands... No one did anything to Bush when he killed Saddam, who was no longer a threat. Yet Putin, who wants to help the Russians, is called a dictator. He is not attacking anyone. He is simply defending himself."

"(About Vladimir Putin) They call him a dictator, but he has the people on his side."

"The separatists are asking for help: if a people wants to secede from a state, why not? A referendum was held in Crimea, 90 percent wanted to stay with Russia, and that was accepted."

"I think Putin is right. That part of Ukraine was Russia and is Russia. Did you know that Khrushchev was Ukrainian too? The separatists are fighting to remain Russian. It's like Istria: we all know it's Italian, even though we accepted the diktats of the superpowers."

"My father needed help with his fields, my mother pushed me to study."

"I'm not afraid of anything. I accepted the end of love, but what came after was truly unbearable. Otherwise, I would still be looking for opportunities to meet someone. But now I've made my choice."

"I am a conservative. If I analyze my life, I have never made any big changes."

"I sent the first check for nine million to my father in Cellino to buy a tractor."

"I always lived with her [Romina Power] knowing that it could be the last day. But I always defended our marriage tooth and nail. My ego and alter ego wage their inner wars inside me. But when the end of the marriage came, it was really hard to accept. Love can be born and it can die, it is written, but I didn't like how it died."

"Ever since I was a child, I sang all the songs by Domenico Modugno and Claudio Villa. My father had bought a radio, and I sang along to all the songs they played. It was a kind of karaoke. When I finished, people outside would applaud."

"A glass of whiskey before concerts. On the advice of Placido Domingo: “It frees up your esophagus and vocal cords,” he told me. A cure-all."

"I'm saying this for the first time: the problem was marijuana. Romina smoked that junk up to four times a day. And she had been doing it for years, even before Ylenia disappeared. She was a different woman. She smoked and was cheerful. When the effect wore off, she became sad and cried. She was unrecognizable. She no longer expressed that attachment to things, that passion for life, for what we had experienced and built over those years. It was the beginning of the end."

"I met Putin, I sang for him, I liked him in the past and now I don't like him anymore, but I was sorry to see myself described as “Putin's friend” in recent days. Unfortunately, I am not his friend. If I were his friend, I would take a nice walk with him in the Kremlin and say to him: let's sit down for five minutes with a nice bottle of wine, or vodka, or pure water. Let's talk about it. It is not right to attack a nation, a country, a family; it is absurd. Now you have to deal with history."

"I have been a committed vegetarian for many years, I can't even remember how many. Even as a child I refused to eat meat, I just didn't like it. [...] Over time, being vegetarian has become an existential necessity. I can no longer eat something that is close to human sensitivity. And one day, long ago, I realized that my choice was irreversible. [...] Also because I see the results on my health and my mental state. Since I banned meat and fish, I have had better dreams, and I know for sure that it depends on the food I eat."

"My desire was to be an instrument of what Franco conveyed musically and what he communicated. This is fundamental for me: what Franco left us is a precious gift that must be watered, nourished, and kept alive forever, even if there were no need to do so. His records, his films, and his paintings bear witness to his thoughts and his culture. He called himself a “man of music.” He was unique."

"Interviewer: “How much did Battiato influence your career?” Alice: A great deal. Before meeting Franco, I probably would have stopped singing because I had already tried twice and failed to achieve what I wanted."

"In the 1980s, Franco and I had common interests beyond music. We had both arrived, by different paths, at the teachings of the philosopher and mystic Gurdjieff. In 1981, I was given his book ‘'Meetings with Remarkable Men’', and it took me two years before I opened it: I read it in one sitting. I was finally ready."

"The last time I saw him was in Milo in 2020. I went to visit him at his home and we spent the whole day together. They were intense moments in which words were unnecessary."

"(Referring to the degenerative disease that had affected Battiato) He was always Franco. He always had been, regardless of outward appearances. In fact, perhaps that day he was even more so."

"We are faced with a double temptation when viewing his [pictorial] works: on the one hand, we would like to indulge in a naive judgment, unaccompanied by the clamor that comes from his legend as a musician, singer, and poet; on the other hand, we feel that we cannot escape this legend, as it necessarily conspires to give us the complete portrait of the man. In other words, if we were to try to channel Battiato's painting into a convenient bed of neo-primitivism, forgetting the operational and intellectual richness that underpins it, it would risk appearing to us as the hobby of an episodic and half-hearted artist; whereas, on the contrary, observing it with both eyes, those of nature and those of culture, we will see its colors marry affectionately with the notes, words, and meditations of the author, and in this alliance, not to say connivance, explain to us the unmistakable signature of a soul."

"He once came to visit us in Montreux while we were recording Zero, and we spent two wonderful days with him, during which he taught us so much. I, [...] am always looking for a father figure. Not only in music: he took us to a Middle Eastern restaurant, where he ordered in Arabic. But somehow, we managed to take him to McDonald's: he had never been there before. We let him try fries with ketchup. At first he was suspicious, but he took a fry, dipped it in ketchup, and said, “Guys, this is delicious! What have I been missing...”"

"Una canzone del 1991 del cantautore Battiato, intitolata Povera patria, riuscì a cogliere in anticipo lo spirito dei tempi. L'Italia vi era rappresentata «schiacciata dagli abusi del potere | di gente infame che non sa cos'è il pudore», abitata da «governanti, quanti perfetti e inutili buffoni!», ma «la primavera tarda ad arrivare [...] non cambierà, non cambierà, | no cambierà, forse cambierà». Dalla canzone Viva l'Italia del 1979 di De Gregori, in cui era orgogliosamente rivendicata, con esplicito riferimento alla strage di piazza Fontana, «l'Italia del 12 dicembre, | l'Italia con le bandiere, l'Italia nuda come sempre, | l'Italia con gli occhi aperti nella notte triste, | viva l'Italia, l'Italia che resiste», erano trascorsi soltanto dodici anni, ma quelle parole sembravano provenire da un'altra epoca. La percezione di questa sfasatura temporale derivava dal fatto che la canzone di De Gregori illuminava il passato della nazione mentre quella di Battiato il suo futuro: come se in quell'arco di tempo sospeso e improvvisamente dilatato, l'Italia fosse stata presa in un vortice, sollevata da un turbine e poi precipitata giù."

"He is a great personality, a national treasure, the representative of the best Sicilian and Italian culture."

"Battiato [...] is considered an intellectual author, but if you analyze his lyrics, they are complete nonsense: quotes upon quotes with no real meaning."

"The extraordinary and disastrous event, albeit pleasantly bizarre, is death. One day I will die silently, I will enter esoteric and synoptic spaces, moving in siderurgical and negotiable conditions. Farewell world, I will say then. I am dead forever."