Fabrizio De Andrè, twenty-four years without the poet of the last
The singer-songwriter died on January 11, 1999, a few months before he had been diagnosed with lung cancer
It was 11 January 1999 when Fabrizio De André died at the National Cancer Institute in Milan, a month before his 59th birthday, leaving Italy orphaned of one of its most beloved singers ever.
Twenty-four years later the poem and his works have remained intact , overcoming the challenge of time and still making those who weren't even born that January 11 fall in love.
Six months before his death he had been diagnosed with lung cancer, which forced him to definitively interrupt the concerts. He was hospitalized towards the end of November 1998, when the disease was at an advanced stage : he only left the hospital on Christmas day, to be able to spend it with his family.
Now there was nothing more to do . Over ten thousand people attended the funeral, in the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta di Carignano in Genoa. «For the first time I had the suspicion that I would never have had that funeral, of that type, with that emotion, with that participation of everyone and I would have told him. I would have said to him: "Look, for the first time I was envious of a funeral"», said my lifelong friend, Paolo Villaggio.
For Faber it all began with Mina ("Without her I would have been a bad lawyer") , who sang "La canzone di Marinella" on TV. Since then, in almost forty years of artistic activity, he has recorded fourteen studio albums bringing stories of marginalized, rebels and prostitutes to the top of the charts for the first time. Extraordinary ability to rework materials, were the songs of Brassens ("The gorilla"), the Spoon River anthology, the work of Edgar Lee Master from which he drew "Not to money, not to love nor to heaven" , to travel between different cultures with "Creuza de ma", to treat religion as a non-believer, with the study of the apocryphal gospels ("The good news").
After Genoa, his great love was Sardinia, which he had chosen as a retreat. At Agnata, a corner of greenery and stone carved out at the foot of Mount Limbara, he had decided to live with his Dori Ghezzi and he also returned when he emerged from the hell of the kidnapping in the shadow of the Supramonte hotel.
The last masterpiece was "Smisurata prayer", the last song of the last album of De André's career, "Anime salve", written with Ivano Fossati and published in 1996 .
(Unioneonline/D)
