Patti Smith Hospitalized in Italy: Report

Mar. 15, 2025

Patti Smith in New York City in October 2022.Photo:Rob Kim/Getty

Rob Kim/Getty

Legendary American rocker and poet Patti Smith was reportedly hospitalized in Italy due to illness, forcing the cancellation of her show there.

Italian media outletTGCOM24 reportedthat Smith, 76, was scheduled to perform a concert at Teatro Duse in Bologna before she was hospitalized in that city.

In an Instagram post,Teatro Duseannounced the cancellation of Smith’s show. “With great regret, we inform the kind audience that the [Patti Smith] concert scheduled for today 12 December 2023 at 9 pm will not be able to go on stage due to a sudden illness that struck the artist,” the venue wrote.

A rep for Smith did not immediately return PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Smith had a string of tour dates in Italy, starting with Ancona on Nov. 28 before heading to Bari, Naples and Modena over the past two weeks. She was scheduled to perform at Teatro Malibran in Venice on Thursday.

Her next U.S. show dates were slated to take place on Dec. 27 in Chicago and Dec. 29 and 30 in Brooklyn, New York.

This past summer, Smith and her band performed at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, opening for the alternative rock group The National.

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Known as the “high priestess of punk-poetry” and inducted into theRock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Smith emerged during the 1970s New York City punk rock scene alongside such other acts as Blondie, Talking Heads, the Ramones and Television.

Smith’s 1975 landmark debut record, the fieryHorses, is regardedas one of the greatest albums of all time. Other notable works in her musical discography include the albumsRadio Ethiopia,Easter,WaveandGone Againand songs such as “Because the Night,” “Dancing Barefoot” and “People Have the Power.”

Additionally, Smith has publishedcollections of poetryand wrote the highly acclaimed 2010 memoirJust Kids, which earned aNational Book Award for nonfiction.

In a 2022 interview withHarper’s Bazaar, Smith spoke about her diverse creativity. “Robert [Mapplethorpe, the photographer] was always worried because I had so many different ways of expressing myself,” she told the magazine.

Smith added, “So many vocations, and why couldn’t I stick to one? I just can’t. It’s funny because every once in a while, somebody very nicely says I have all these different ways of expressing myself, I’m a Renaissance woman, but I think more I’m really a jack-of-all-trades.”

Kirsty Hatcher

source: people.com