Toto Cutugno, the singer whose cliche-ridden but irresistibly catchy L’Italiano defined ideas of Italian culture to millions of listeners across Europe and Russia, is to have his funeral in Milan on Thursday after his death this week at the city’s San Raffaelle hospital aged 80. Born Salvatore Cutugno to Sicilian parents in Tuscany, the singer was for a decade a regular at the Sanremo music festival, the Italian institution that served as inspiration for the Eurovision song contest. He won Eurovision in 1990, with a hymn to the foundation of the European Union two years later: “Together, unite, unite, Europe”, he sang in Insieme: 1992. Largely bypassing the Anglosphere, the song reached No 1 in the charts in Italy, France, Switzerland and Portugal. When he was awarded a lifetime achievement award at San Remo in 2013, he performed L’Italiano with the Red Army choir.

Source: The Guardian August 24, 2023 00:54 UTC