Farewell to Tony Dallara, the first of the 'screamers': from 'Come prima' to 'Romantica'

The music world mourns Tony Dallara, who died at the age of 89 after a hospitalisation in Milan. Among his hits were Come prima and Romantica, with which he won Sanremo in 1960 paired with Renato Rascel. His real name was Antonio Lardera, he was born in Campobasso on 30 June 1936 and grew up in Milan. The news was confirmed to Ansa by his daughter.

Tony Dallara's career started in 1958 with a song destined to remain an icon of Italian pop music: Come prima. Performed in the style of the Platters, it sold more than 300,000 copies in just a few weeks and is still popular today and used in commercials. In 1960 he won the Sanremo Festival singing Romantica, paired with Renato Rascel, who also wrote the song. In the same edition, he also sang Noi, paired with Jula De Palma. In 1961 he returned to the Sanremo stage again with Un uomo vivo, paired with Gino Paoli, and in 1964 with Come potrei dimenticarti, together with Ben E. King.

Tony Dallara was one of the protagonists of the radical change in Italian pop music in the late 1950s. With him the so-called 'urlatori' were born, those singers who rebelled against the bel canto tradition of Italian songs and brought the new rhythms of rock and roll to Italy. His interpretations upset the perfect order of soft melody and warbles, inventing a style that would later be taken up by Mina and Celentano, selling millions of records with songs like Ti dirò, Brivido blu, Julia, Ghiaccio bollente, Bambina bambina.

In 1960, while winning the Sanremo Festival, Tony Dallara opened his first solo painting exhibition in the famous Galleria Cairola in Via della Spiga in Milan, introduced by a text by Dino Buzzati published in the Corriere della Sera.

Painting, perhaps his main artistic vocation, brought him into contact with Andy Warhol, Lucio Fontana, Roberto Crippa, Enrico Baj and other great painters of his time, and marked his creative path until his last exhibition in 2023. In 2001, Tony Dallara was made a Cavaliere della Repubblica by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, in recognition of his contribution to Italian music and for bringing Italian song to the world, rewarding his long success and career.