The songwriter with a slightly scratchy voice "died at 69 years old in his bed, surrounded by his two daughters", in Court-Saint-Etienne, between Brussels and Charleroi, Belgium, told AFP his manager and conductor, Laurent Comtat.

"Barzotti preferred to be called a singer of emotion rather than a romantic. He was a skinned alive, a real sensitive, who drank to fight his stage fright," he said.

Ill, Barzotti had stopped his career in 2020, and died of pancreatic cancer.

"I am rital and I remain so / And in the verb and in the gesture / Your seasons have become mine / But my music is Italian," Barzotti sang in his biggest hit, "Le Rital" (1983).

Born Francesco Barzotti, on July 23, 1953, in a family of Italian immigrants from the Marche region (center), the singer with the curly hair of an intense brown, evoked his origins and his condition of "foreigner" in this song - which the new generations could hear in the film "Camping".

"French lover"

His father was a miner. Claude will train in his youth in music theory, classical guitar and singing. He began his career in the 1970s but success did not arrive until the 1980s.

Among his hits, slows and hit songs that rocked the booms of the 1980s, such as "Je ne t'écrirai plus" (1984), or "Aime-moi" (1990).

Belgian singer Claude Barzotti in December 1984 in Paris © - / AFP

In the years 2008-2009, he had participated in nostalgic tours "Tender age and wooden head", with Marie Myriam, Frank Alamo, Demis Roussos or Patrick Juvet.

Barzotti had spoken publicly several times about his alcohol problems, confiding on Belgian TV that he had drunk up to five or six bottles of whisky a day.

"I'm a sad person. I can't explain it because I have everything, but I don't have anything actually," he said on screen.

"Claude Barzotti was the +french lover italiano of service+, an endearing and sincere guy, who suffered a lot because of women," recalled for AFP the singer Hervé Vilard ("Capri, it's over"), who rubbed shoulders with him in concerts.

"He was the idol of the Middle East! You went to a night club, if you were French, to please yourself, they sent you Barzotti's records. You used to go to New York, you heard Barzotti in Little Italy!" he said.

"His songs weren't marshmallow. He needed words, he was a Latin. And it was another time," he continued.

Barzotti? "A delightful funny man, full of humor, he loved life and maybe that's what won him," producer Olivier Kaefer, an organizer of shows in the 1980s, told AFP. "We're going to miss it a lot."

Belgian singer Claude Barzotti, June 12, 2015 in Beirut © ANWAR AMRO / AFP/Archives

Among the reactions to his death on Saturday, the secretary general of the French Communist Party Fabien Roussel said he was "sad to learn of the death of Claude Barzotti, interpreter of +Rital+ and so many songs of the 80s that made us vibrate and dance".

© 2023 AFP