The singer-songwriter, with a slightly hoarse voice, died in his bed at the age of 69 surrounded by his two daughters in Court-Saint-Étienne, between Brussels and Charleroi in Belgium, his manager and chef told AFP. Conductor Laurent Comtat
“Barzotti preferred to be described as a singer of emotions than as a romantic. He was a lively, skinned man, a really sensitive man, who drank to fight his stage fright. »
— A quote from Laurent Comtat, manager of Claude Barzotti
Claude Barzotti performing in Nice in 2008. (File Photo)
Photo: Getty Images/Toni Anne Barson
The sick Barzotti ended his career in 2020 and died of pancreatic cancer.
I am Rital and I remain so / And in word and gesture / Your seasons have become mine / But my music is Italian, Barzotti sang in his 1983 greatest hit, The Rital.
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Born Francesco Barzotti on July 23, 1953 to a family of Italian immigrants from the Marche region, the singer with the curly, intensely brown hair evokes in this song his origins and status as a foreigner, which news generations may have heard in the film Camping.
His father was a minor. Claude will learn music theory, classical guitar and singing in his youth. He will start his career in the 1970s, but success will not come until the 1980s.
Among his hits we can find ballads and hits that rocked the booms of the 1980s, such as “I won’t write to you anymore” (1984) or “Aime-moi” (1990).
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In 2008-2009 he took part in the nostalgic tours Age Tender and Head of Wood with Marie Myriam, Frank Alamo, Demis Roussos or Patrick Juvet.
someone who is sad
Barzotti had spoken publicly about his alcohol problems several times and confided on Belgian television that at times he drank up to five or six bottles of whiskey a day.
i am a sad person I can’t explain it because I have everything, but I actually have nothing, he let out on the screen.
“Claude Barzotti was the ‘French lover Italiano de Service’, a lovely and sincere guy who suffered greatly from women. »
— A quote from Hervé Vilard, singer
Claude Barzotti, seen here in Beirut in 2015, describes himself as a “singer of emotions”. (archive photo)
Photo: Getty Images/AFP/ANWAR AMRO
It was the idol of the Middle East! You went to a nightclub, if you were French, to please you we sent you Barzotti’s records. “You went to New York, heard Barzotti in Little Italy,” emphasized Hervé Vilard.
His songs were no marshmallow. He needed the words, he was Latin. And that was another time, he continued.
“The Ritual I Am will forever remain grateful to you for singing so well of our soul, our passions, and our storms. »
– A quote from Salvatore Adamo, another famous Italian-Belgian voice
We have just lost a friend, an extraordinary artist who made us dream with songs that will stay in our memories, wrote singer Frédéric François on social networks.
Barzotti? “A delicious, funny, humorous man, he loved life and maybe that won him over,” said AFP producer Olivier Kaefer, organizer of shows in the 1980s. We will regret it very much.
Moment of nostalgia with Claude Barzotti
ICI PREMIERE SHOW • JS Tendresse
Moment of nostalgia with Claude Barzotti. 13-minute audio content, ICI premiere show. listen to audio.
Duration 13 minutes 12:44