Toto Cutugno whose song L’Italiano was No 1 across Europe dies at 80

Toto Cutugno performing on 26 July 2002 at the Roman theatre outside Tunis. He won Eurovision in 1990 with a paean to the EU’s foundation. Photograph: Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty Images

Toto Cutugno, the singer whose cliche-ridden but irresistibly catchy L’Italiano defined ideas of Italian culture to millions of listeners across Europe and Russia, is to have his funeral in Milan on Thursday after his death this week at the city’s San Raffaelle hospital aged 80.

Born Salvatore Cutugno to Sicilian parents in Tuscany, the singer was for a decade a regular at the Sanremo music festival, the Italian institution that served as inspiration for the Eurovision song contest.