Camilo Sesto, Spain’s romantic hitmaker, is dead at 72

Camilo Sesto, a Spanish songwriter, singer and producer whose romantic songs have sold more than 180 million copies worldwide, died Sunday in Madrid. He was 72 and lived in Madrid.

His manager, Eduardo Guervós, told the Spanish public broadcaster TVE that he had died in a hospital after suffering two heart attacks, The Associated Press reported. In recent years he had also struggled with kidney problems.

With a tenor voice that could be gentle and imploring and then rise to impassioned peaks, Sesto became a pop superstar across the Spanish-speaking world in the 1970s. In hits like the wall-of-sound 1978 pop production “Vivir Así Es Morir de Amor” (“To Live Like This Is To Die of Love”), he sang about romance, longing and heartache. He garnered more than 50 No. 1 hits worldwide. Sesto wrote nearly all of the songs he recorded on more than two dozen albums, and he also wrote and produced hits for Spanish and Latin American pop singers including Miguel Bosé, José José and Ángela Carrasco.

Camilo Blanes Cortés was born Sept. 16, 1946, in the town of Alcoy in the province of Alicante. As a child, he sang at weddings and christenings. In the mid-1960s, he joined Beatles-style rock bands that brought him to Madrid: Los Dayson and Los Botines. He started a solo career with producer and songwriter Juan Pardo as a mentor, changing his name first to Camilo Sexto and then to Camilo Sesto; “sexto” is Spanish for “sixth,” and he was the sixth Camilo Blanes in his family.

A dramatic lost-love song that he wrote, “Algo de Mi” (“Something of Me”) became Sesto’s first No. 1 hit in 1972, inaugurating a two-decade outpouring of hits, including “Algo Más” (“Something More”), “Perdóname” (“Forgive Me”), “¿Quieres Ser Mi Amante?” (“Do You Want to Be My Lover?”), “Donde Estés, Con Quién Estés” (“Wherever You Are, Whomever You’re With”) and “Amor Mío, ¿Qué Me Has Hecho?” (“My Love, What Have You Done to Me?”).

In 1975, he starred in a Spanish-language adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” in Madrid, financing the production and playing the title role, bringing Broadway-style musical theatre to Spain and demonstrating his abilities as both singer and actor. His touring circuit expanded to arenas worldwide, including a devoted following in Japan.

He never married. “A life like the one I have had, jumping from one place to another, cannot be endured by anyone, let alone a woman,” he told the Spanish newspaper El País in a 2018 interview. But in 1983 he had a son with Mexican actress Lourdes Ornelas: Camilo Blanes, who survives him.

Despite health problems, including a liver transplant in the early 2000s, Sesto had remained active. Last year he released a retrospective album, “Camilo Sinfónico,” which placed new, transformed orchestral arrangements behind vocals from his hits. Although he played a two-year farewell world tour from 2009 to 2011, he had scheduled a new US tour in October.

Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, wrote on Twitter that Sesto was “one of the most beloved and universal artists,” adding, “his melodies will always be part of our memory.”

© 2019 New York Times News Service