“We went from Los Angeles to New Orleans. And there he made the fatal encounter”, the singer tells Corriere della Sera referring to the homeless and 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”
What happened to Ylenia Carrisi on New Year’s Eve 1994, when he disappeared into thin air a New Orleans? Almost thirty years later, his father tries to give the answer, Al Bano Carrisi in a long interview granted to Corriere della Sera to celebrate his 80th birthday on May 20, retracing the most important moments of his life between career and private life. The most intense and exciting passage? The one on the disappearance of his eldest daughter, born in 1970, a loss so painful that it prompted him to think about suicide. And her sister Romina, a guest yesterday at Today is another day: “I’ve never looked for her. We each have our own destiny and if hers was to chase the wind, metaphorically, we have to let her run and go.”
AL BANO SPEAKS ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE DAUGHTER YLENIA
“An extraordinary girl”. So Al Bano defines his daughter Ylenia, a student of the prestigious King’s College London. “He spoke English, Spanish, French, Portuguese. He came to Moscow with us and learned some Russian, in the evening Romina and I would go to sleep and she would go down to Red Square to see the changing of the guard at Lenin’s mausoleum”, recalls the singer. Everything changes when he accompanies his parents to the United States to shoot a documentary film, Lost America. “We went from Los Angeles to New Orleans. And there he made the fatal encounter”, he says referring to the homeless and 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 ‘let me tell you, it’s a drug problem‘. She lost me, I found her in the morning at 8. of her Her mother told her that she had risked her life on the waters of the Mississippi ”.
YLENIA CARRISI’S LAST NIGHT IN NEW ORLEANS
Al Bano then retraces the last weeks of Ylenia, from the trip to Venice to find Romina’s aunt, Anne, a painter and the sister of Tyrone Powerat the departure of Ylenia for Belize to write a book on the homeless. “I said: fine, but first you have to graduate, it won’t be long… Instead she went to Belize, lived in a hut, a man threatened her, she saved herself by holding a child in her arms. So he returned to New Orleans. She said he didn’t want to hang out with plastic people ”. And right in New Orleans, on New Year’s Eve 1994, she disappeared. “I pieced together that night hour by hour. I spoke to witnesses. I met Masakela, who had also been in prison, but denied any guilt”, reveals Al Bano, confessing that he also questioned the last person he saw alive Ylenia, the port keeper. “She was sitting by the river, he warned her: you can’t stay here. But Ylenia didn’t leave. The guardian insisted, so she told him ‘I belong to the waters’, and dived into the river, swimming in 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 Mississippi is unforgiving. Romina never wanted to accept it. But she went like this ”.
WHEN AL BANO THINK ABOUT SUICIDE
The disappearance of Ylenia and the separation with Romina have inevitably turned Al Bano’s life upside down, who denies the connection between the disappearance of his daughter and the end of the marriage. The singer then reveals that he has lived nine years of solitude and great pain, which also led him to think about suicide. “I thought God had forsaken me. And with the pain grew a voice that said: ‘Al Bano eliminated. Al Bano end it‘. But then I realized it was the devil’s voice. And I also felt the presence of God. I felt a profound peace. I said to myself: who are you to judge God? Remember that He too has lost a son”.
ROMINA CARRISI AND THE MEMORY OF YLENIA
Romina Carrisi Power also spoke of Ylenia, usually refractory to open up publicly on such an intimate topic. Guest of Serena Bortone to Today is another day, the actress and writer recalled the atmosphere in their house and how the disappearance of her sister had triggered all kinds of inferences: “There was absolute silence, a response to all that hustle and bustle outside. Anything was said, even that we kept it hidden at home and this hurt me a lot. We never talked about it: it was like having a monster locked in the closet, but one that grew bigger and bigger”. At the time of the events Romina was very small, but remember that she is sister Cristel they made collages with the words “welcome back Ylenia”. “Our parents kept shifting the date and the collages became a tall pile: there came a moment when we realized that she would never come back.” Then she concludes with a profoundly delicate sentence: “I’ve never looked for her. First because I was too young, then because I realized that each of us has a destiny. If hers was to chase the wind, metaphorically, we have to let her run and go.”
