Though hugely popular as a singer-songwriter in Italy, he never stopped experimenting. He composed for movies, opera and ballet, directed films and painted.
Franco Battiato, one of Italy’s most prominent singer-songwriters, who expressed esoteric ideas in catchy lyrics and, ever an eclectic artist, also composed operas and movie soundtracks, directed films and painted, died on Tuesday at his home in Milo, Sicily. He was 76.
His manager, Francesco Cattini, confirmed the death. He did not give a cause but said Mr. Battiato had been ill for a long time.
In a career of nearly 60 years, Mr. Battiato explored a variety of musical genres with an eye toward innovation. His works included experimental electronic music, symphonic compositions and ballets in addition to pop songs. Mystical and spiritual qualities permeated much of his work.
President Sergio Mattarella, in a statement, called him “a cultured and refined artist who charmed a vast public, even beyond national borders, with his unmistakable musical style — a product of intense studying and feverish experimentation.”
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture, referred to one of Mr. Battiato’s lyrics on Twitter: “How hard it is to find the dawn within nightfall. (Franco Battiato, R.I.P.)”
Mr. Battiato began his career performing in a cabaret in Milan. He reached a wider audience in the 1960s, when he appeared on a variety show on national television. His “La Voce del Padrone” (“The Master’s Voice”), released in 1981, is said to have been the first pop album by an Italian musician to sell one million copies.
Despite his commercial success, Mr. Battiato continued experimenting. He composed music that mixed historical, social, ethnic and mystical themes; he wrote lyrics in Italian dialects and foreign languages.
“He had a vast musical and literary culture that was mostly self-taught,” Mr. Cattini said. “He did not like repeating himself, and that made him unique.”
His lyrics included references to “Euclidean Jesuits,” Ming dynasty emperors and the whirling dervishes of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam.
“Speaking of the Sufis in Italy in the 1980s was like talking about aliens,” said Giuseppe Pollicelli, one of the directors of “Temporary Road,” a 2013 documentary about Mr. Battiato. “But people got it, and loved it.”
He added, “He had a magic touch in channeling complex topics through songs that were easy to listen to, memorize and internalize, even if people could not always decrypt the meaning.”
Mr. Battiato’s 1991 pop song “Povera Patria” (“Poor Homeland”), a lament about an Italy crushed by the abuse of power and governed by “perfect and useless buffoons,” became a hit, and some of its lyrics entered everyday language in Italy.
The next year, after the Persian Gulf war, Mr. Battiato performed with the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra in Baghdad as a gesture of solidarity, sitting on the floor and singing in Arabic and Italian.
“He wasn’t interested in politics, but in people,” Mr. Cattini said.
He was also a painter. In a 2012 video interview, Mr. Battiato explained that he had always had a restless curiosity and, frustrated by his lack of drawing skills, had decided to learn how to paint. His artwork, initially signed with the pseudonym Süphan Barzani, was exhibited in galleries in Italy, Sweden and the United States. He drew the covers of two of his albums and of the libretto for his second opera, “Gilgamesh,” written in 1992. (His first was “Genesis,” in 1987.)
His soundtracks for Italian movies include one for “A Violent Life” (1990), about the Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini; he also composed music for ballets staged at the Maggio Musicale theater in Florence. And as a filmmaker he was named “best new director” by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists in 2004 for his “Lost Love,” about a boy’s journey from Sicily to Milan in the 1950s.
Francesco Battiato was born on March 23, 1945, in Jonia, a coastal town in eastern Sicily. His father, Salvatore, was a wine merchant; his mother, Grazia (Patti) Battiato, was a homemaker. He attended high school in Acireale, Sicily, and moved to Milan when he was 19 to try to make a living in music.
He is survived by his older brother, Michele.
After living in Milan for years, Mr. Battiato moved in the late 1980s to a villa in Milo, north of the eastern coastal city of Catania, tucked between the volcano Etna and the Mediterranean. He had spent most of his time there since then.
Source: Music - nytimes.com
