Franco Battiato, among the greatest songwriters of Italian music, leaves us.

One of the greatest songwriters of Italian music Franco Battiato passed away this morning at his home in Milo.

Born in Jonia on March 23, 1945, in his production he made cultured and pop music coexist with moments of the avant-garde, thus spanning many genres. Since the early 1970s he has been an active participant in European research and experimental currents: his first records, from 1971 to 1975, were released on the experimental Bla Bla label. In 1979 he released his first work with the Italian Emi: L’Era del Cinghiale Bianco, and throughout the 1980s he became a source of inspiration for many musicians.

It was in 1991 that he released the album Come un Cammello in una gondaia, which also included the song Povera Patria, which quickly became a symbol of civic engagement; the album was recognized as the best record of the year. Since the mid-1990s he has collaborated with the philosopher Manlio Sgalambro, particularly on the occasion of the eighth centenary of the birth of Frederick II of Swabia, when the opera Il Cavaliere dell’intelletto (The Knight of the Intellect), to a libretto by the philosopher, was performed in Palermo Cathedral in 1994.

Instead, it was 1996 when L’imboscata, the Polygram album that contains one of his most famous masterpieces, The Cure, recognized as the best song of the year at the International Music Awards, was released, and the following year was the highly successful single Shock in my town.

June 2000 saw the release of Campi magnetici, a record containing the ballet music commissioned by the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and the same ballet, with lyrics by Sgalambro, was performed at the Teatro Comunale in Florence. This was followed in 2001 by the albums Ferro Battuto (with duets with prestigious singers) and Fleurs3 (2002); in 2003 PERDUToAMOR, Battiato’s directorial film debut, sctitto with Manlio Sgalambro, was released in theaters. The film’s soundtrack contains songs ranging from symphonic and operatic music to Italian music of the 1960s. In 2004 with his PERDUToAMOR he won the Nastro d’argento as best Italian first-time director, and in the same year Dieci Stratagemmi was released, inspired by the ancient Chinese text of military tactics and strategy; he is then in concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London: in a recital conceived and realized in favor of FAI - Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano.

Inneres Auge (2009) is an album of reinterpretation of the popo-electronic period of the 1980s, but above all it is intended to be a cry of protest against the degradation and decay of humankind, starting from the Italian political situation to Tibet. Finally from 2015 is the anthology Le nostre anime (Our Souls), which traces Battiato’s output from his first album to the present: it also includes a version of another of his most famous songs, Centro di gravità permanente (Center of Permanent Gravity), with Mika, adapted for the occasion in English.

“A Maestro has left us. One of the greatest of Italian songwriting. Unique, inimitable always in search of new artistic expressions. He leaves an everlasting legacy”: this is how Culture Minister Dario Franceschini paid tribute to Franco Battiato.

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Franco Battiato, among the greatest songwriters of Italian music, leaves us.

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