Roberto Vecchioni: A Life in Music, Battles Against Ignorance, and Personal Loss

Roberto Vecchioni doesn't stop. Between songs and tours and a book, Between Silence and Thunder. At 80 years old, the singer-songwriter who won Sanremo with Alfa is still fighting against "ignorance, the inability to look at others, the insensitivity to people's pain. These are the worst things that can exist," he tells Il Secolo XIX. Ambra Angiolini has health problems, her theater tour in Urbino is canceled. The artist apologizes: "My body tells me to slow down." The wife Daria In his songs, he talks about dreams, writes to his wife Daria "remind me to never forget you." He writes it as a joke because "I know very well that I will never do it, I say it to reassure myself." But the professor has a fear too: "I'm afraid of writing songs that no one will listen to. Then you take refuge in the coherence of continuing to do what you feel. Which should never be banal or mediocre. And at that moment you risk not being understood. For years almost no one knew 'Dream boy dream.' Suddenly it became famous all over Italy." The youth A song that deserved more recognition. No doubt. "I was waiting for the chance for a comeback. I owed it to him, because it's much more beautiful than 'Call me love again.' And universal, in fact, the boy scouts, the Catholic boys, the schoolgirls were already singing it. The general public, however, did not." To Il Secolo XIX he says he also felt misunderstood for a while but now it's different. Everything's different. The Sanremo Festival gave him a new life. "Young people call me, look for me, I receive messages from everywhere. I really feel a physical affection. I would not have imagined it. Evidently, it was important to pass the baton to Alfa, during the Festival, because it means that certain values are alive." The death of his son Then the private, the pain for the dramatic death of his son Arrigo. An immense pain for his wife Daria who "has never recovered. I wait for her to smile sometimes, but it's difficult. She has friends, girlfriends, children, and grandchildren who love her. But sometimes she withdraws, goes to the bathroom, and cries for an hour..." And how is Roberto Vecchioni? "I suffer like crazy. But I manage to put my head in the words, in the small things that I can tell people. And then the joy of having reached 80 years quite intact. It's a gift from heaven that I don't want to waste until the last day."