Richard Cocciante - the composer of the musical “Notre Dame de Paris”.

Richard was born in Saigon, his father is Italian, his mother is French. He remembers his childhood in Indochina well, at 11 Richard’s family moves to Rome and there he began his career of performer at early seventies.

The success has come to Richard after the song "Bella senz'anima", that was included in his third album, “Anima”. In France this song was performed by Ennio Morricone and was called "Cet homme que voila".

The French public knew Cocciante in 1978. After a short period of time the whole Europe knew the talented singer. The Spanish version "Bella sin alma" was very popular in Spain and South America. The following year was released "Coup de soleil", another popular song. The album "Sincerite", recorded in Los-Angeles in 1983 with the group “Toto” was released in four versions – on French, on Italian, on English and on Spanish languages. The original texts were written by Etienne Roda-Gil.

In 1985 Richard sang a duet with Fabienne Thibeault. The song was called "Question de feeling", the words were written by Luck Plamondon. The following album was “L'homme qui vole”. In 1988 Richard’s recorded the song “Il mio rifugio" to the film by Patrice Leconte, called “Tandem”. For the next 3 years Richard would live in Miami. in 1991 his song "Se stiamo insieme" won the San-Remo festival.

In 1992 Catherine Lara и Luc Plamondon invited Richard to play a role of Chopin in “Sand et les Romantiques”. Also Luck’s proposed Richard to write an opera. In 1993 the new French album, “Empreinte”, was released. In 1994 Cocciante released the collection of best French songs (500 copies were sold), and he gave concerts in Olympia and in Zenith in Paris.

Cocciante continued cooperating with Luck Plamondon and in 1995 they wrote a song for Celine Dion, "L'amour existe encore". The author of “Starmania” has written the majority of songs in the album "L'instant present". But the most popular project of Richard Cocciante and Luck Plamondon is the musical “Notre Dame de Paris”.