Costantino Vitagliano turns 50: “I earned 10,000 euros an hour. I was the most beautiful of all”
The most loved former tronista in Italy: "on a whim I suddenly bought a Bentley for 250 thousand euros, I had six or seven houses. Just for chatting I got a million a year"
ROME – Costantino Vitagliano turns 50. “Half a century, I hear them all”, he tells the Corriere della Sera which he dedicates to him a celebratory interview. He lost 29 kilos due to an autoimmune disease. “I navigate by sight”, says the most coveted former tronista in Italy. A true icon of the 2000s. Costantino and that’s it, a living brand, at a certain point. From Men and Women to Infinity and Beyond.
“Now the discos are no longer hosted: there are events in shops, in shopping centres”, he says. I still use my own image. In the past I earned a lot. Suffice it to say that on a whim I suddenly bought a Bentley for 250 thousand euros, that I had six or seven houses. I got a million a year just for chatting. I couldn’t quantify. At a certain point the requests were too many, to limit the evenings the agency raised the fee to the maximum going beyond ten thousand euros for an hour. And instead of decreasing the requests increased. I earned and made others earn. Today they pay me two thousand euros plus expenses for 90 minutes. But I can choose.”
“They also call me in shops: I’ll evaluate it. The other day they contacted me to attend an aperitif 700 kilometers from Milan, offering 500 euros. I reply: sorry, no. Answer: others do it! So ask the others” .
“My dream as a kid was to be the most beautiful. Not the footballer, nothing else: it was the 90s and I wanted to be the most beautiful of all. For a period there was ‘I did it. I watched TV, I saw luxury clothes, cars, holidays: I was born in the suburbs to a simple family and I wanted to make a lot of money.’
“I was in demand, I was excited for years. People looked for me, I arrived and the delirium went away. I never felt used in a negative sense. In the collective imagination, I’m the one at Lele Mora’s feet in the winking photos: fake Lele Mora and I worked together but Costantino never kissed or massaged feet, ever. Neither in a literal nor metaphorical sense”.
“For six, seven years I lived like crazy. I always worked, I never took a break. I only thought about going around, having fun, getting paid. Around 2007 I started to give in. It even bothered me to hear my name, to look at myself mirror One day I fainted in spasms. The tour of the hospitals began, the tests were fine you have nothing! I pulled the plug.”