SILVIO’S FINAL SONG
SENDOFF FOR AN ICON
MY FATHER WAS A SINGER. HE WAS LOVED BY THOUSANDS DAVID DE VITO
BY rights, the sad passing of Italian restaurant family patriarch Silvio De Vito should have been marked with a public affair – a free concert perhaps in a beautiful park.
But the De Vito family has been denied being able to honour their opera-loving dad that sendoff because of the coronavirus shutdown, which has tragically also forced the abrupt closure of their famous Southport riverside restaurant, De Vito’s Waterfront.
About half-a-dozen family members will instead gather tomorrow at a funeral home for a private ceremony.
“We could have had a huge concert in the park for my dad as a free, wonderful sendoff. Now we can’t even have it in a church,’’ said his son David, known to the world as The Singing Chef who, after coming second in the final of Australia’s Got Talent in 2011, went on to a 10-year singing career that included a recording contract, a world tour and his own show, on which he invited his father to perform.
“My father was a singer. He was loved by thousands,’’ David said.
The family was known on the Gold Coast for serving fine Italian food with generous helpings of song.
“We sang together at the Sydney Opera House – we performed together in my show, the David De Vito Show,’’ he said.
That was in 2012. By then, Silvio was already in the grips of the dementia that would finally take him on Wednesday last week, aged 85.
When contacted by the Bulletin, David was out with his mother Rosa, choosing a suit to wear for the funeral.
His mind was swimming with myriad things, deciding what to wear, how the small funeral should be run, and the pain of having to make the phone calls that morning that put 10 restaurant staff out of work.
“He passed away Wednesday. (Then) we were told to batten down the hatches on Sunday,’’ he said.
Silvio was born in Italy near Naples and came to Australia in the 1950s, hoping to forge a career as a singer.
He and Rosa met and married. They “led a simple life’’, David said, and bought a milk bar in Adelaide before the family – including David’s brothers Carlo, Anthony and Adrian – moved to the Gold Coast in the 1990s.
Long-time Gold Coasters have fond memories of their restaurants – Ciao at Labrador, which David first ran when he was just 19, and the family-run Fratelli in Southport, before the move to De Vito Waterfront.
A song David wrote for his last album, Shoebox Full Of Memories, was about his father. It will be played at the funeral.
“There’s been a massive outpouring of love and support on social media,’’ David said. “We’ll do something (to honour him publicly), most likely on his birthday in October.’’