Raimondo Todaro’s Battle Against Cancer
Nobody could have imagined that Raimondo Todaro, during the 2020 edition of Amici, had faced two malignant tumors. The dance professor, at his debut in Maria De Filippi’s school, had not shown any signs that revealed the illness. But now, as a guest of Silvia Toffanin in the Verissimo living room, the thirty-six-year-old has spoken for the first time about his battle against cancer: “It all started with appendicitis, when they took me to the operating room the intervention lasted four hours because the appendix had pierced a piece of the intestine.” From then on, Raimondo began to do a series of routine checks: “Until one day, while entering the rehearsal room with Lorella Cuccarini and Alessandra Celentano, they called me saying that I had two malignant tumors and that I had to operate immediately.”
Staying Positive Despite the Diagnosis
Todaro faced two surgical interventions in a few months: “It happened that on Monday I went to the hospital and operated with total anesthesia and the next day I went to work calmly. The work itself was my luck, because it was the only moment when I didn’t think about the illness. Now I continue to check myself, for now I’m out of danger.” Physically, in 2020, the dancer was “in pieces”. But nobody, watching him on TV, could realize it: “Everyone lives it in their own way, I covered myself with makeup and kept smiling because I didn’t want to be treated differently.” And, above all, he didn’t want to make his little Jasmine, the daughter born in 2013 from his wife Francesca Tocca, suffer: “Jasmine knew that Dad had a stomach ache, she saw me enter and leave the hospital and she understood something.”
Raimondo and Francesca’s Love Story
In the Verissimo living room, Raimondo also talked about the “dancing love” (his words) with Tocca: the two married in 2014, said goodbye in 2019, and after a year and a half they have come back together: “Everything is fine. We are mischievous. We love each other so much, but like in all couples there are highs and lows. This summer we had an argument in a restaurant. Since Francesca is very impulsive, she got up to clear her ideas and the next day they said we had quarreled. But couples all over the world quarrel! Am I jealous of her? She never gave me the opportunity to be. But if she gives me the opportunity I am very jealous: I am Sicilian“. The love between Raimondo and Francesca, in short, in spite of the gossip, is not in balance. And now that he has defeated the disease, Todaro is ready to return, for the third year in a row, to the Amici school: “I can’t wait to start again, to go into the room and work with the kids. Being happy is the most important thing and there, I am happy”.
