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Legendary rocker and poet Patti Smith has been reportedly forced to cancel a show after being hospitalized in Bologna, Italy, with an unknown illness.
According to local media outlet TGCOM24, Smith, 76, was slated to take the stage at Teatro Duse, the oldest theater in the city, before taking ill.
“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 in an Instagram post.
“We are all sorry for the inconvenience caused by this news. Our best wishes for a speedy recovery go to the artist.”
The Post reached out to Smith for comment.
Smith, who had been playing several shows in Italy starting on Nov. 28, is scheduled to play in Venice on Thursday; however, it remains unclear if the “Gloria” singer will recover in time.
The “Because the Night” songstress is slated for three US performances before the end of the year, too. Her previously scheduled shows include a set at Chicago’s Salt Shed on Dec. 27 and two shows in Brooklyn, New York.
This past summer, Smith and her band played at Madison Square Garden as the opening act for the rock group the National.
Smith got her musical start in 1973 when she teamed up with Lenny Kaye, Richard Sohl, Ivan Kral and Jay Dee Daugherty and recorded their first song, “Hey Joe/Piss Factory.”
The group went on to record three albums before disbanding after their third album, “Wave,” in 1979.
Smith went on to marry fellow rock star Fred Smith, who died in 1994. The pair often joked that they only got hitched so she wouldn’t have to change her last name.
The duo had two children: Jackson, 41, and Jesse, 36.
Shortly after her husband’s death, Smith returned to music and has since put out eight albums as a solo artist.
Some of her other achievements include winning the “One Book, One New York” award for her heartbreaking memoir “Just Kids.” The 2010 book details her relationship with avant-garde photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
In 2015, the “Dancing Barefoot” singer led a sold-out concert to help raise money for several residents in the East Village after an explosion ripped through a Second Avenue apartment building. And four years later, she lent her star power to a Saint Laurent ad campaign in 2019.
Recently, Smith was nominated to join the star-studded ranks of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and was ranked at No. 117 on Rolling Stones’ list of 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
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