Al Bano on Ylenia: “They told me: she swam in a butterfly. I understood it was her”
Al Bano at the age of 80 he decides to tell some unpublished and touching things of his life: details on the death of his daughter Ylenia and breaking up with Romina Power. Il singer traces the dramatic moments before the disappearance of Daughter. “She was an extraordinary girl. She spoke English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. She accompanied us to the USA, – Al Bano tells Corriere – to shoot a documentary film, America lost. We went from Los Angeles to New Orleans. And there he made the fatal encounter. With street artists. I remember a black man, his name was Masakela. One evening the company went to the cinema, but I stayed with Ylenia because I had noticed something strange. Suddenly she began to run, and I followed, she shouted “stop that man wants to hurt me“, and that man was me, I shouted “leave me, it’s a drug problem“. “On New Year’s Eve 1994 he disappeared.
“I reconstructed that night hour by hour – continues Al Bano al Corriere – testimony. I met his friend Masakela, who had also been in jail, but he denied being guilty. I questioned the last person who saw her, the guardian of the porto. She was sitting by the river, he warned her: you can’t stay here. But Ylenia didn’t leave. The guardian insisted, so she said to him “I belong to the waters‘” e he dived in the river, swimming a butterfly. There I understood that the guardian was telling the truth, because Ylenia used to say that sentence as a child before diving, and she swam in a butterfly stroke. But the Mississippi does not forgive. Romina never wanted to accept it. But she went like this. After her death I also thought about the suicide“. Al Bano then talks about the end of the romance with Romina: “Our relationship didn’t end because of Ylenia’s death, but because of her he stopped looking at me like before“.
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