Composer
Biography
Elio Cesari of Milan took the name Tony Renis and became one of the most widely exported Italian songwriters of his generation. Quando, quando, quando, written with Alberto Testa in 1962, has been recorded in dozens of languages and belongs to that small class of Italian songs which travel everywhere and settle in every idiom that receives them, from big band to bossa nova; Grande grande grande, a decade later, made a second journey of the same kind and reached Shirley Bassey and Céline Dion. From the 1980s he worked increasingly as a producer, and increasingly in the United States. The Prayer, written for the film Quest for Camelot and recorded by Dion with Andrea Bocelli, won a Golden Globe in 1999 and was nominated for an Academy Award.