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, has died at Milan’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 the contest in 1980 with Solo Noi but finished in second place six times, winning him a reputation as Sanremo’s eternal runner-up.
Reinterpreted by the French singer Dalida as Monday Tuesday … Laissez moi danser, Cutugno’s 1979 song Voglio l’anima became one of biggest hits of the disco period in France. 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.
But his greatest success was 1983’s L’Italiano, a song the newspaper Corriere Della Sera described as the “Christian Democrats of canzone”, selling millions of records even though no one would confess to listening to it.
Originally penned for the more charismatic singer Adriano Celentano, who turned it down, and better known under its chorus Lasciatemi Cantare, the song left no cliche of Italian culture untouched. “Let me sing, I’m an Italian”, it announced itself, namedropping spaghetti al dente, shaving cream with mint flavour, caffè ristretto and a “broken-down Fiat 600”.
Largely bypassing the Anglosphere, the song reached No 1 in the charts in Italy, France, Switzerland and Portugal. A cover version entitled “I am a Finn” became a hit in Finland the same year. It travelled around the eastern bloc, enjoying popularity in Ukraine, Albania, Poland, Georgia and Russia. When he was awarded a lifetime achievement award at San Remo in 2013, he performed L’Italiano with the Red Army choir.
In 2019, Ukrainian members of parliament sought to ban Cutugno from performing in Kyiv due to alleged pro-Russian sympathies but he denied a personal friendship with the Russian president, saying he had only shaken his hands after a concert once.
“I am a friend of the Russians, not Putin’s,” he said. “But let’s leave Putin where he is. I wish him all the worst in the world.”
In 2007 Cutugno was diagnosed with prostate cancer, but recovered to take part in the Sanremo contest for one final time in 2010. In recent years he had largely withdrawn from public life.
Italian politicians and musicians gave tributes to the singer after reports of his death on Tuesday afternoon. “Ciao Toto, great Maestro,” wrote singer Eros Ramazzotti. “We will miss you.”