The two anniversaries of the Sanremo Festival: the death of Luigi Tenco and Claudio Villa
The sixty-seventh Sanremo Festival is underway and two myths of Italian song have not been forgotten. Their memory will be staged like a good ghost on the stage.
This year's Sanremo Festival brings with it a very sad anniversary. Fifty years after the tragic and absurd death of Luigi Tenco, an Italian singer-songwriter who wrote some of the most beautiful songs of all time.
At the Sanremo Festival, in the 1967 edition, Tenco committed suicide at the age of twenty-eight, immediately after being eliminated from the race. It was the greatest tragedy in the history of Italian song.
Tenco: suicide as an act of protest and the evil of living
The death of Tenco colored the Festival with tragedy. Before killing himself with a gunshot, the singer-songwriter left a farewell note in which he argued against the "rejection" of his song entitled "Ciao amore, ciao". In the note he mentioned two songs that had been preferred to his own at the Sanremo Festival. The suicide, according to the singer-songwriter, was an act of protest against the Italian public who sent Orietta Berti's “I, you and the roses” to the final and against a commission that selected Gianni Pettenati's “La Revolution”.
The disappointment of that evening was only a "detonator" to an evil of living that the singer-songwriter had been carrying inside for some time. He was an illegitimate child at a time when being one was an ignominy. He suffered greatly from the fact that his real father did not recognize him and never wanted to meet him. He always felt rejected and rejected.
The death of the “reuccio”: another anniversary that characterizes this year's Sanremo Festival
It was February 7, 1987. Final evening of the XNUMXth edition of the Festival.
The conductor Pippo Baudo, with a blank stare and a cracked voice, announced the death of Claudio Villa. A sad ending that left everyone breathless, just during the Sanremo Festival, in the temple where the great Claudio had seen his greatest triumphs, winning four times.
This year's Sanremo Festival will remember the “reuccio” of the Italian song and the tragic death of Luigi Tenco. Two great personalities of the Italian song.
