Peppino di Capri died on his beloved island of Capri at 87 after a long illness, closing the life of one of the defining voices of Italian song. His funeral was scheduled for 17:00 in the Piazzetta di Capri.
For readers searching world news today, the name behind the stage was Giuseppe Faiella, born on 27 July 1939, and the career that made him famous stretched across more than six decades. He was one of the last great figures of twentieth-century Italian song, with two victories at the Festival di Sanremo, nine appearances on Canzonissima, four turns at the Festival della Canzone Napoletana and a win there in 1970. His songs included Champagne, Roberta, Luna caprese and Un grande amore e niente più.
That success began far from the polished image he later carried. As a child during the Second World War, he was already playing piano in public for American troops, then started studying piano at six and was performing in nightclubs in Capri and Ischia at 14 with Ettore Falconieri. The two formed the Duo Caprese, later joined by other friends in the Capri Boys, and it was during one of those evenings that a manager from Carisch noticed him. Mario Cenci then suggested the stage name that stayed with him for the rest of his life.
His career kept moving in different directions without losing its center. In the 1960s he also became an actor and appeared in musicarelli, later returned to Sanremo in 1995 with Trio Melody alongside Gigi Proietti and Stefano Palatresi, and appeared again at the Festival di Sanremo in 2023. He married Roberta Stoppa, separated from her in 1970 after the birth of their first son, Igor, and later remained a public figure whose voice was tied to a particular idea of Italian melody.
What remains unresolved is the illness that took him, which has not been specified, but the timing leaves no doubt about the scale of the loss. Capri now prepares to say goodbye to a man whose first audience was wartime soldiers and whose final public moment is set to be in the square that gave him his name.
