Andrea Bocelli
Andrea Bocelli OMRI OMDSM (Italian: [anˈdrɛːa boˈtʃɛlli]; born 22 September 1958)[1] is an Italian tenor. After performing evenings in piano bars and competing in local singing contests, Bocelli signed his first recording contract with Sugar Music. He rose to fame in 1994 after winning the newcomers' section of the 44th Sanremo Music Festival performing "Il mare calmo della sera".[2]
"Bocelli" redirects here. For his second album, see Bocelli (album).
Since 1994, Bocelli has recorded 15 solo studio albums of both pop and classical music, three greatest hits albums, and nine complete operas, selling over 75 million records worldwide.[3] He has had success as a crossover performer, bringing classical music to the top of international pop charts.[4][5][6] His album Romanza is one of the best-selling albums of all time, while Sacred Arias is the biggest selling classical album by any solo artist in history.[7] My Christmas was the best-selling holiday album of 2009[8]
[9]
[10] and one of the best-selling holiday albums in the United States.[11] The 2019 album Sì debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and US Billboard 200, becoming Bocelli's first number-one album in both countries. His song "Con te partirò", included on his second album Bocelli, is one of the best-selling singles of all time.[12]
In 1998, Bocelli was named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People.[13] He duetted with Celine Dion on the song "The Prayer" for the animated film Quest for Camelot, which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.[4] In 1999, he was nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards. He captured a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records with the release of his classical album Sacred Arias, as he simultaneously held the top three positions on the US Classical Albums charts.[4]
Bocelli was made a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2006, and was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 2 March 2010, for his contribution to Live Theater, and he was awarded a gold medal for Merit in Serbia in 2022. Singer Celine Dion has said that "if God would have a singing voice, he must sound a lot like Andrea Bocelli",[4][14] and record producer David Foster has often described Bocelli's voice as the most beautiful in the world.[15][16]
Early life[edit]
Bocelli was born with impaired sight to Alessandro and Edi Bocelli on 22 September 1958.[17][18] He was born with congenital glaucoma. He stated that his mother's decision to give birth to him and overrule the doctor's advice was the inspiration for him to oppose abortion.[18]
Bocelli grew up on his family's farm where they sold farm machinery and made wine in the small village of La Sterza, a frazione of Lajatico, Tuscany, Italy, about 40 km (25 mi) south of Pisa.[19] His mother and younger brother Alberto still live in the family home; his father died in 2000.[20]
Bocelli showed a great passion for music as a young boy. His mother has said that music was the only thing that would comfort him. He started piano lessons at age 6 and later learned to play the flute, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, guitar, and drums.[17] His nanny Oriana gave him the first record of Franco Corelli, and he began to show interest in pursuing the career of a tenor.[21] By age 7, he was able to recognize the famous voices of the time and tried to emulate the great singers.[21]
At age 12, Bocelli lost his vision completely after being hit in the eyes with a soccer ball.[13][22] Doctors resorted to leeches in a last-ditch effort to save his sight, but they were unsuccessful and he remained blind.[23]
Bocelli also spent time singing during his childhood.[24] He gave his first concert in a small village not far from where he was born.[21] He won his first song competition at age 14 with "'O sole mio" at the Margherita d'Oro in Viareggio.[24] He finished secondary school in 1980, and then studied law at the University of Pisa.[25][17] To earn money, he performed evenings in piano bars, and it was there that he met his future wife Enrica in 1987.[17] He completed law school and spent one year as a court-appointed lawyer.[26]
Career[edit]
1992–1994: Sanremo and Il mare calmo della sera[edit]
In 1992, Italian rock star Zucchero held auditions for tenors to make a demo tape of his song "Miserere", to send to Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti. After hearing Bocelli on tape, Pavarotti urged Zucchero to use Bocelli instead of him. Pavarotti eventually persuaded Zucchero to record the song with Bocelli, and it became a hit throughout Europe. In Zucchero's European concert tour in 1993, Bocelli accompanied him to sing the duet, and he was also given solo sets in the concerts, singing "Nessun dorma" from Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot.[27] Bocelli signed with the Sugar Music label in Milan after Caterina Caselli heard him sing "Miserere" and "Nessun Dorma" at a birthday party for Zucchero.
In December, Bocelli entered the preliminary round of the Sanremo Music Festival in the category of Giovani, performing "Miserere". He won the preliminary competition with the highest marks ever recorded in the newcomers section. On 28 December, he debuted in the classical world in a concert at the Teatro Romolo Valli in Reggio Emilia.[27] In February 1994, he entered the main Sanremo Festival competition with "Il mare calmo della sera", and he won the newcomers section, again with a record score. Following his win, Bocelli released his debut album of the same name in April, and it entered the Italian Top Ten, being certified platinum within weeks.[27]
In May 1994, he toured with pop singer Gerardina Trovato.[27] In September, he sang at Pavarotti's annual Charity Gala concert, Pavarotti International in Modena, where he sang Ruggiero Leoncavallo's "Mattinata" and sang a duet with Pavarotti, Maurizio Morante's "Notte e Piscatore".[27] In September, he made his opera debut as Macduff in Verdi's Macbeth at the Teatro Verdi in Pisa.[28] Bocelli had been an agnostic, but around 1994, partly as a result of immersing himself in the works of Russian author Leo Tolstoy, he returned to the practice of the Catholic faith.[29] He performed the hymn "Adeste Fideles" in Rome before Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Basilica at Christmas.[27]
1995–1997: Bocelli and Romanza[edit]
As winner of the newcomers section at the 1994 Sanremo Festival, Bocelli was invited to return the following year. He entered the main competition with "Con te partirò" and finished in fourth place.[30] The song was included on his second album, Bocelli, produced by Mauro Malavasi and released in November 1995. In Belgium, "Con te partirò" became the best-selling single of all time.[31]
His third album, Viaggio Italiano, was released in Italy in 1996.[30] He was invited to sing a duet with English soprano Sarah Brightman at the final bout of German boxer Henry Maske. Brightman approached Bocelli after she heard him singing "Con te partirò" while she was dining in a restaurant. Changing the title lyric of the song to "Time to Say Goodbye", they re-recorded it as a duet with members of the London Symphony Orchestra and sang it as a farewell for Maske.[32] The single debuted atop the German charts, where it stayed for fourteen weeks. With sales nearing three million copies, and a sextuple platinum award, "Time to Say Goodbye" eclipsed the previous best-selling single by more than one million copies.[30] In 1996 he topped the Spanish singles chart with a duet with Marta Sánchez, "Vivo por ella", the Spanish version of "Vivo per lei", recorded with Giorgia for his 1997 compilation album, Romanza. He also recorded a Portuguese version of the song with Brazilian singer Sandy.
The same year, Bocelli recorded "Je vis pour elle", the French version of "Vivo per lei", as a duet with French singer Hélène Ségara. Released in December 1997, the song became a hit in Belgium (Wallonia) and France, where it reached No. 1 on the charts. To date, it is the best-selling single for Ségara, and the second for Bocelli after "Time to Say Goodbye". On 3 March, he appeared in Hamburg, Germany, with Sarah Brightman to receive the ECHO music award for "Best Single of the Year".[30]
In the summer of 1997, he gave 22 open-air concerts in Germany, and an indoor concert in Oberhausen on 31 August. In September, he performed in concert at the Piazza dei Cavalieri in Pisa for the home video A Night in Tuscany (Italian: una notte nella Toscana) with guests Nuccia Focile, Sarah Brightman and Zucchero. The concert was also Bocelli's first concert to air on PBS, as part of the In The Spotlight series. It also marked Bocelli's debut to American audiences. On 14 September, in Munich, Germany, he received an ECHO Klassik Best Seller of the Year award for his album, Viaggio Italiano.[30][33]
Back in Italy in Bologna on 27 September, he sang at the International Eucharistic Congress. On 19 October, he sang at the TeleFood benefit concert held in the Vatican City to raise awareness about world hunger. On 25 October, he received a Bambi Award in the Klassik category in Cologne, Germany.[30]
1998–1999: Aria: The Opera Album, Sogno and Sacred Arias[edit]
Bocelli made his debut in a major operatic role in 1998 when he played Rodolfo in a production of La bohème at the Teatro Comunale in Cagliari from 18 to 25 February.[34] His fifth album Aria: The Opera Album was released in March.[35]
On 19 April, Bocelli made his United States debut with a concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., followed the next day by a reception at the White House with then US President Bill Clinton.[35] On 5 May, he appeared in Monte Carlo, winning two World Music Awards, one in the category "Best Italian Singer", and one for "Best Classical Interpretation".[35][36] He was also named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People of 1998.[13]
From June to August, he toured North and South America. In September, he received his second Echo Klassik award, this time for Best Selling Classical Album with Aria: The Opera Album.[35] On Thanksgiving Eve, Bocelli was a guest on Céline Dion's television special These Are Special Times in which he joined Dion to sing "The Prayer" and he also sang "Ave Maria" solo. The duet was included on Dion's album These Are Special Times (1998) and was re-issued with the DVD of the TV special in 2007. The song also appeared on the Quest for Camelot soundtrack in 1998 and on Bocelli's album, Sogno, the following year.
In the New Year, he performed two concerts at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. At the 56th Golden Globe Awards held on 24 January, "The Prayer" won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song from the film Quest for Camelot.[37] At the 41st Grammy Awards ceremony on 24 February, Bocelli was nominated for Best New Artist, which was won by Lauryn Hill.[4] Bocelli and Dion sang "The Prayer" at the ceremony.[37] The song was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song and performed by Bocelli and Dion at the ceremony held at the Los Angeles Music Center on 21 March.[37]
From 11 to 24 April, he toured the West Coast of North America, from San Diego to Vancouver, with a final performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Actress Elizabeth Taylor stood by his side on the stage during the encore, while he sang "The Prayer".[37] At the invitation of Steven Spielberg, Bocelli sang in Los Angeles on 15 May before Bill Clinton at an event on behalf of the Democratic Party. At the end of May, he toured Portugal and Spain and sang with Portuguese Fado singer Dulce Pontes. On 27 June, he took part in the Michael Jackson benefit concert for suffering children in Munich's Olympic Stadium.[37]
From 10 July to 27 August, he appeared in a guest role for seven performances of The Merry Widow at the Verona Arena.[28][37] As the "Tenor Conte Andrea" he performed three arias: "La donna è mobile" from Verdi's Rigoletto; "Tu, che m' hai preso il cuor" from Franz Lehár's Das Land Des Laechelns and "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" from Verdi's La traviata.[37] On 10 September, together with soprano Daniela Dessì and two Polish singers, he performed at the Great Theatre of Łódź in Poland. From 7 October to 19 November, he made his United States operatic debut in Jules Massenet's Werther at the Detroit Opera House with the Michigan Opera Theater.[28]
He also performed at Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and gave further concerts in Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago, and made an appearance on Jay Leno's first installment of The Tonight Show. Then Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani gave him the Crystal Apple award. His seventh album Sacred Arias, which contains exclusively sacred music, was released worldwide on 8 November, and two weeks later reached number one on the US Classic Billboard charts – making Bocelli the first vocalist to hold all top three places on the chart, with Aria, the opera album in second place, and Viaggio Italiano in third place. The album also included the hymn of the Holy Year 2000, which was chosen as the official version by the Vatican in October.[37] To promote Sacred Arias, Bocelli recorded his second PBS concert at the Roman church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in Rome, in 1999, singing most of the songs from the album. The special was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Classical Music-Dance Program during the 52nd Primetime Emmy Awards.
In Italy, Bocelli sang in Florence at a meeting of the centre-left Heads of State. Invited by Queen Elizabeth II, he performed at the annual Royal Variety Performance in Birmingham, UK, on 29 November. On 30 November, his book La musica del silenzio, an autobiographical novel, was released in Italy,[37] and in 2017 it was turned into a movie as The Music of Silence, directed by Michael Radford. From 12 to 21 December, he performed six concerts in Barcelona, Strasbourg, Lisbon, Zagreb, Budapest and Messina, some of which were broadcast on local television. He also performed on German television; Wetten, dass..? on 11 December and the José Carreras Gala in Leipzig on 17 December. On 31 December, he finished a marathon twenty-four concerts in thirty days, with a concert at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New York, welcoming in the new millennium.[37]
2000–2001: Verdi and Cieli di Toscana[edit]
At the 42nd Grammy Awards, Bocelli was nominated twice. "The Prayer" was nominated for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals and for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. Bocelli performed it with Dion at the ceremony. His "World Tour 2000" started on 31 March. In May, his Sacred Arias album was voted album of the year by listeners of the Classic FM radio station in the UK. His world tour continued from 12 to 14 May with four concerts in Japan and South Korea. At the end of the UEFA European Football Championship, he performed with Valery Gergiev and Renée Fleming at a concert on the River Maas in Rotterdam. On 6 July, he performed at the Statue of Liberty in New York City for his third PBS special American Dream: Andrea Bocelli's Statue Of Liberty Concert. The concert was a dedication to his father, who died in the beginning of 2000. He was accompanied by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Steven Mercurio with special guest Soprano Ana Maria Martinez and a surprise appearance by Sarah Brightman to sing with Bocelli on "Time to Say Goodbye". For the final encore, he dedicated "Sogno" to his late Father. On 17 August, he performed in Giuseppe Verdi's Messa da Requiem at the Verona Arena in Rome.
His seventh album, Verdi, was released on 11 September. In September, he performed three concerts in Australia. He received another Echo Klassik award for "Bestseller of the year" for Sacred Arias. In November, his first complete opera recording, La Bohème, was released. In December, he received another award in Germany, the Goldene Europa for classical music.[38]
In January 2001, Bocelli portrayed the main character in Mascagni's opera L'amico Fritz at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona and again performed the tenor part in Verdi's Requiem. On 19 March, the Requiem album was released with Bocelli as tenor. From 22 March to 6 April, he toured North America accompanied by Cecilia Gasdia and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. On 17 June, he performed at the re-opening of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In July, he performed two concerts in Dublin with Ana María Martínez and the New Symphony Orchestra. At the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice on 4 October, he presented his new album Cieli di Toscana and was recognised for having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide. In October, he opened the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sicilian opera composer Vincenzo Bellini in Catania. On 28 October, he sang Franz Schubert's Ellens dritter Gesang (also known as "Ave Maria", Latin for "Hail Mary") as a representative of the Catholic faith, during a memorial concert at Ground Zero in New York City for the victims of the September 11 attacks there. In November, he received the Platinum Europe Award for one million sales of the album Cieli di Toscana, and at the Italian Music Awards he was given a special award from the Federation of the Italian Music Industry for his merits as an "Ambassador of Italian music in the world". He performed seven more concerts in the US accompanied by Ana María Martínez, and on 23 December, he sang the Italian national anthem as well as works of Bellini and Verdi at the traditional Christmas concert in the Italian Senate, which was broadcast live on television for the first time.[39]
Voice[edit]
Bocelli is a widely popular singer with a substantial fan base worldwide. However, he is also a polarizing figure in classical music, whose voice and performances
have routinely been the subject of negative reviews by critics. Italian spinto tenor Franco Corelli praised Bocelli's voice after hearing it for the first time during a master class in 1986, in Turin, and he later gave Bocelli private lessons.[161][162][14]
Puerto Rican soprano Ana María Martínez, who regularly performs with Bocelli, said, "More than anything, Andrea has something that is unique in that he brings this light that is always around him. And this purity of heart and beauty of sound just touches the listener. It can't be described."[162]
Celine Dion said while introducing him during her Christmas Special for These Are Special Times, in 1998, that "if God would have a singing voice, he must sound a lot like Andrea Bocelli,"[4][14] and David Foster, a producer of the album, often describes Bocelli's voice as the most beautiful in the world. Similarly, jazz singer Al Jarreau, who performed with Bocelli on the "Night of the Proms" tour in Europe in 1995, described him as "the most beautiful voice in the world,"[163] and American talk show host Oprah Winfrey commented on her talk show that, "when I hear Andrea sing, I burst into tears."[161][162] After attending Bocelli's concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 2009, British-American actress Elizabeth Taylor said, "My mind, my soul were transported by his beauty, his voice, his inner being. God has kissed this man and I thank God for it."[164] Taylor had been a passionate fan of Bocelli's since the beginning of his music career in the mid-1990s.[165] Other fans include Albert II, Prince of Monaco, who invited the tenor to sing at his wedding, as well as Sarah, Duchess of York, and actress Isabella Rossellini.[163]
Bocelli's voice, more specifically his interpretation of opera, has been regularly criticized by classical music critics. These include Bernard Holland of The New York Times and Andrew Clements of The Guardian.[166] In 1999, The New York Times chief music critic Anthony Tommasini in his review of Bocelli's North American opera debut at the Detroit Opera House in the title role of Massenet's Werther commented, "The basic colour of Mr. Bocelli's voice is warm and pleasant, but he lacks the technique to support and project his sound. His sustained notes wobble. His soft high notes are painfully weak. Inadequate breath control often forces him to clip off notes prematurely at the end of phrases."[166] In December 2000, Tommasini again criticised Bocelli, this time for his La bohème album when he stated that Bocelli "still has trouble with basic things, like breath support" and his voice had been "carefully recorded ... to help it match the trained voices of the other cast members in fullness and presence."[167]
In describing Bocelli's singing, The New York Times music critic Bernard Holland noted, "the tone is rasping, thin and, in general, poorly supported. Even the most modest upward movement thins it even more, signalling what appears to be the onset of strangulation. To his credit, Mr Bocelli sings mostly in tune. But his phrasing tends toward carelessness and rhythmic jumble... The diction is not clear."[168] Furthermore, Holland observed that "The critic's duty is to report that Mr Bocelli is not a very good singer." The Associated Press reported "Passion? Yes. Power. No. Bocelli's voice – though robust in spirit and precisely in tune, even in the upper register – had a thin quality that never opened up."[169] Similarly, classical music critic Andrew Clements found Bocelli's studio opera recordings consistently disappointing in quality: "Bocelli's profoundly unmusical contribution, with its unvaryingly coarse tone, wayward intonation and never a phrase properly shaped, fatally undermines all their contributions."[170] Anne Midgette of The New York Times agreed, noting "a thinness of voice, oddly anemic phrasing (including shortchanging upper notes of phrases in a most untenorial manner), a curious lack of expression."[171]
During a 2009 performance in New York, the music critic Steve Smith wrote "For cognoscenti of vocal artistry the risks involved in Mr. Bocelli's undertakings, both then and now, need no explanation. Substantial technical shortcomings masked by amplification are laid bare in a more conventional classical setting. Mr. Bocelli's tone can be pleasant, and his pitch is generally secure. But his voice is small and not well supported; his phrasing, wayward and oddly inexpressive."[172]
In 2010, Joe Banno of The Washington Post gave an unfavorable review of Bocelli's Carmen recording, describing the oft-noted failings in Bocelli's vocal resources on full display in this performance: "Bocelli, to be fair, possesses an essentially lovely tenor and knows his stuff when it comes to selling a pop ballad. And Decca's close miking of his puny voice inflates his sound to near-Franco Corelli-like dimensions. But his short-breathed, clumsily phrased, interpretively blank and often pinched and strained singing makes his Don Jose a tough listen."[173]
Bocelli is the author, and co-author, of numerous works available in Italian, English, and other languages. Some books are available in Braille and others in large print.[205] The list below is limited to his English language books which are widely available.