Sergio Endrigo

Sergio Endrigo was an Italian singer-songwriter, born on 15 June 1933 in Pola, then in Italy and today Pula in Croatia, which is why he is on Muzika-Balkan. His father Romeo was a painter, sculptor and self-taught tenor, and Sergio spent his childhood in Istria. In February 1947, after Istria passed to Yugoslavia, he and his mother left Pula as refugees, first for Brindisi and then for Venice, a story he later told in his song "1947". He died in Rome on 7 September 2005, aged 72, and is buried in Terni, his wife's home town.

To help his mother he left school, worked as a hotel porter and learned the guitar, and was soon singing and playing double bass in dance orchestras. In Riccardo Rauchi's orchestra he met Riccardo Del Turco, later his brother-in-law, and made his first record in 1959. A year later he signed with Dischi Ricordi, where Nanni Ricordi pushed him to write his own songs.

Following Ricordi to RCA in 1962, he released "Io che amo solo te", the love song that became his signature and was later recorded by Mina, Ornella Vanoni, Gino Paoli and Fiorella Mannoia, among many others. His first solo album that year also held "Vecchia balera", "La periferia" and "Il soldato di Napoleone", set to verses by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Critics often compared him to the Genoa school of songwriters such as Gino Paoli, Fabrizio De André and Luigi Tenco.

Endrigo first sang at Sanremo in 1966 with "Adesso sì". In 1968 he won the festival with "Canzone per te", sung with Roberto Carlos, the first win for a singer-songwriter there, and the same year he represented Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest with "Marianne". He came second at Sanremo in 1969 with "Lontano dagli occhi", sung with Mary Hopkin, and third in 1970 with "L'arca di Noè", with Iva Zanicchi.

He also worked with poets. La vita, amico, è l'arte dell'incontro (1969) was made with Vinícius de Moraes, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Toquinho, L'Arca (1972) was a children's album about animals with Vinícius, and Ci vuole un fiore (1974), to poems by Gianni Rodari with Luis Bacalov, gave Italian children one of their best-loved songs. His last tour, in Brazil, came in 2000. The playlist brings together his classics, from "Io che amo solo te" and "Adesso sì" to "Teresa" and "Aria di neve".