After a long struggle with depression, 55-year-old talented singer and songwriter Lucio Quarantotto, best known for his work on Andrea Bocelli's "Con te partirò", jumped from the window of his sixth story apartment in Venice Mestre last week.
Widely lauded by critics from his first release for his vocal depth, delicacy and immense emotive qualities, Quarantotto won the Tenco Prize for best first work at Sanremo Music Festival for his first album Di mattina molto presto (Very early in the morning) in 1984.
Though his first album and the follow-up Ehi là did not sell well, Quarantotto became well-known among his peers, and in 1990 he began writing song lyrics for other prominent singers, including Franco Battiato and Caterina Caselli.
Caselli, who is also one of Italy's best record producers, convinced Andrea Bocelli to perform the now classic "Con te partirò" (With you, I will leave) for the 1995 Sanremo Festival. Bocelli was initially hesitant to perform the song, for which Quarantotto wrote the lyrics to Francesco Sartori's music, because of its complexity, but it is now one of the pieces most closely associated with the singer. Quarantotto went on to write much of Bocelli's popular repertoire, including "Canto della Terra" (Song of the Earth) and "Immenso" (Immense) for 1999 album Sogno (Dream).
Lately, he was rumoured to be working on a new album of his own, for a possible release this coming fall. His death was a tragic loss for the music community.
During the 100th anniversary of the Primo Maggio concert in 1990 Rome's Piazza del Popolo, Quarantotto made a rare public appearance to perform "E se questa fosse l'ultima", a piece he had written for Caterina Caselli, with her:
