Italian singer who has cut an unusual swath through a unique path, becoming a pop star without radio and a chart-topping lyric tenor virtually without singing opera. His CD “Romanza” 1997, is an album of emotional ballads, but in his stadium concerts his voice soars in grand opera. Seen often on TV, he cannot envision doing movies, and he is a romantic figure though pushing middle age. In the last six years his records have sold some 20 million copies yet he is up for a Grammy as Best New Artist, that in itself totally rare for a classical artist.
Bocelli’s parents had a very successful family business selling farm machinery. Almost immediately after he was born, his family doctor noticed that he had great difficulty seeing. Born with an hereditary form of glaucoma he underwent his first eye operation at six months of age. After 27 more operations, he lost his sight at the age of 12 following a soccer accident in which he was hit by a ball. He began piano lessons at the age of six and he also plays the saxophone, guitar, and flute. At 13 he won a contest in Viareggio with a song he had composed. In performances he is modest and polite, holding onto a scarf to center himself with his eyes closed. No frills, no acts, no antics. He simply sings and his audience is still, loathe to miss a note.
Bocelli grew up on a Tuscan vineyard. He earned a law degree, and spent a year as a public defender. After seeking out the great retired tenor Franco Corelli for lessons, he spent his late 20s making the rounds of piano bars. A record contract was not long to appear. The effortless vaulting between different types of voice production, letting his lyric tenor flow, gave him a dimension unclaimed by any other pop singer. Though his classical education was incomplete, his records began to gain attention for their extraordinary quality, a tenor with a baritonal tinge and a fast vibrato which made him sound masculine and virile. His blindness not only makes him appear vulnerable, but he is good-looking and modest, very appealing.
Moving into the international theater, Bocelli sang “The Prayer” with Celine Dion at the Hollywood Oscars on 3/21/1999. His first love remains opera, which he sings at his pro American debut in Detroit in the fall of 1999. Though his success started in the pop scene, it is swelling in the classical music world. Critics have not always been kind, but age is aiding, rather than handicapping Bocelli, with a richer, deeper tenor.
Bocelli married on 6/27/1992; one son, Amos.
On 4/11/1999 he began his first Tour of the Americas, the biggest tenor attraction since The Three Tenors. At his Hollywood Bowl Concert, after four curtain calls, one adoring fan exclaimed, “I think he just turned opera into a pop concert!”
Link to Wikipedia biography