Among the Italian Cantautori, who are often also cultural representatives of their cities, he is considered to be the most stylistically versatile, most intellectual, and also most colorful: Franco Battiato, born on March 23, 1945 near Catania, was between Eurovision in his more than fifty-year career Song Contest, in which he took part in 1983 together with Alice, and electronic music (early on he had dealt with John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen), between the opening act (as for Brian Eno and Nico) and the opera stage, for which he composed several works, between the San Remo Festival, where he only appeared in 2011, and the symphony orchestra, which played his pieces.

Andreas Rossmann

Freelance author in the features section.

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    His most successful genre, however, was the canzone, the poetic, thoughtful, ironic, socially critical, and sometimes even spiritual song with which he has been playing since the early albums "L'era del cinghiale bianco" (1979) and above all "La voce del padrone" ( 1981) in Italy, where it stayed in the charts for thirteen months and was at number one at times, and soon became famous beyond Italy. Canzoni such as "Cuccuruccucù", "Bandiera bianca" or "La stagione dell'amore" are among his most famous titles, his discography includes more than forty albums, plus film scores and several operas.

    He has also emerged with (esoteric) books and films, including one about the writer Gesualdo Bufalino (1921 to 1996), whom he paid tribute to posthumously in 2010;

    he wrote songs for Milva and Alice;

    as a visual artist he signed his works with the pseudonym "Süphan Barzani".

    At the age of nineteen Franco Battiato went to Milan, where he, the Sicilian, encountered Christmas with the big shops, the festive lights and lots of snow like in Charles Dickens' “Christmas Carol”.

    “I had completely forgotten Sicily,” he once said, “for which it was later to take revenge.” In Sicily, he positioned himself against the mafia early on and raised his voice, in 1997 he performed at the big concert on the fifth anniversary of the murder by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1997 in Palermo.

    For a political career he once toured, but he was too undiplomatic and opinionated. When the then regional president of Sicily, Rosario Crocetta, appointed him culture minister of the island in 2021, Battiato accepted the office as a non-party on the condition that he would not receive a salary - and it was less than five months later because he made offensive statements in the European Parliament Italian MPs had made going again.

    Before that he was a cultural ambassador for Sicily and remained silent until he fell silent four years ago, accompanied by rumors about his state of health. Italian President Sergio Mattarella praised him as a "learned and refined artist whose unmistakable musical style - the result of intensive study and feverish experimentation - fascinated a wide audience, even beyond national borders". On Tuesday morning Franco Battiato died after a long illness in his house in Milo, a village on the eastern slope of Mount Etna, just a few kilometers above his birthplace Riposto on the Ionian Sea.