Zucchero was ordered to pay €37,000 for defaming an ex-boyfriend in his autobiography

Zucchero Fornasciari was found guilty by the Massa Civil Court of defamation and forcing him to pay moral damages to a former friend who is defined in his autobiographical book “Sunday Voice. The Novel of My Life” (Mondadori, 2011), a bad man, womanizer and do nothing: the rock star will have to pay him 37 thousand euros. According to Judge Domenico Provenzano, the news of the ruling was reported by the Corriere Fiorentino newspaper, the phrases used in the autobiography “damage reputation” and “damage the social and family relations of the aggrieved party, with whom it is related.” His wife is greatly degraded.”

For Adelmo Fornaciari, the real name of the famous singer-songwriter, these expressions were functional in the “narrative plot”. For the judge, however, these are “offensive expressions that, contrary to what the singer claims, do not align” with the plot of the story, and have the “only effect of discrediting the ex-boyfriend”.

It all started with the publication of Zucchero Sugar Fornaciari’s autobiography. The sentimental account of those fragments of life with childhood in Roncochesi, in the Emilia countryside, the blues-tinged first performances in the Versilia ballrooms and the hardships of the young Emilian-speaking “foreigner”, has wandered on the Internet and revived in newspapers and on television. And so the book ended under the singer-songwriter’s ex-boyfriend tree. It was his daughter who gave it to him for Christmas 8 years ago knowing the past the two had in common. “Unfortunately, reading the novel has caused inconvenience and annoyance to my client’s family,” explained lawyer Alessandro Fontana to Corriere Fiorentino, who submitted the complaint to his colleague Katia Buratti. “Eight years later, the Court has established that some of the statements unequivocally refer to him, damaging his reputation.”

These expressions, according to Judge Provenzano, “objectively disparage (urging the reader into a natural judgment of censure about behavior of this kind) regardless of the ironic tone and colloquial language in which the events in the text are reported; the tone – concludes Judge – is in itself It does not make the facts and judgments described and expressed incorrect and/or implausible.”