Andrea Bocelli may not satisfy the purists but he has brought classical music to millions, writes IMAGINE, if you will, what it may be like to fly blind. To be enclosed in darkness in an unfamiliar place, helpless, hurtling sightless through space; surrounded by strangers and unable to distinguish impending danger or menace. This is the terrifying scenario Andrea Bocelli faces every time he makes the long, alarming trip to Australia.

Tha Australian

Susan Chenery |

August 09, 2008

Andrea Bocelli: "I am scared of flying," he admits. "I don't like it much so it is especially tiring for me because I am so nervous."

Those sad, sightless eyes.

On a grey, late spring day, bursts of rain dance across the coast of Tuscany, near Pisa. Forte dei Marmi is where the beautiful and seriously rich come together to conspicuously display themselves in the European summer. Its boutiques are for those with limitless credit, the villas on its wide streets are elegant palaces to pleasure.

But even by the superior standards of his neighbourhood, Bocelli's villa is impressively vast: an old hotel, in fact, that he turned into a classically proportioned Italian house. Beyond the shuttered windows is the ocean he will never see; he moves through rooms whose extravagant beauty he will never know.

In his own familiar world you see how vulnerable he is, how dependent he is on those around him to guide him through the unknown; how much faith it takes, how much courage is involved in facing amorphous audiences he cannot see.

And you see, too, how fortunate he was. He had glaucoma as a child and his sight was taken from him by a soccer accident at age 12. Yet he was given the gift of music. For Bocelli, music is illumination, it is light. "Music is incredibly meaningful and important because it helps you to live," he says. "For me it is a necessity."

In the music are all the colours denied him in his waking life: "The music is made of colours, lots of them, the more colours there are, the more interesting the music.

"And there is strong proximity with art. Art is a way of communicating the incommunicable, a way of communicating something that can't be expressed with words so there is an absolute analogy between the various art forms."

On the ground floor of his villa is a grand piano on which, if you are lucky, he will give an impromptu performance. His relationship with this instrument is so intense, he plays with so much feeling and lightness, that it can bring tears to your eyes.

"I have studied piano for many years, so to me it's a friend that provides great companionship, even though I have an undying love for all musical instruments.

"Unfortunately, I haven't been able to study them all but, based on what I learned with the piano, I can just about mistreat other instruments. There are times when I walk past the cupboard where I keep all my wind instruments and I grab the first one that takes my fancy."

His hearing and sense of touch are so acute that he is able to name the manufacturer of my tape recorder simply by turning it on.

In suede shoes, a silk shirt and jeans, Bocelli is a tall, attractive man. His seeming gentleness and kindness belie what has to be an incredible strength of character.

He refuses to discuss his blindness and obstinately speaks in Italian though he has perfect English. There is something about him that seems unreachable, remote.

While audiences adore him, some opera purists and critics are not nearly so kind. He uses microphones to make up for the weakness and lack of technique in his voice, they say. He sullies the classical canon and lowers standards by crossing into lucrative collaborations with pop artists such as Celine Dion and Sarah Brightman. His opera is classical-lite, they sneer; his concerts are more like pop concerts than opera; he is a spectacle.

British music writer Norman Lebrecht once wrote witheringly, "Bocelli is plain and simple a San Remo smoocher who was snapped up by desperate classical labels as a marketing gimmick: it is the blind leading the deaf. He is rarely in tune and never in tempo. Listen to his recording of the Verdi Requiem and blush."

There is no allowance made for the fact that when he performs he can see neither the conductor nor the orchestra. "I usually have a good relationship with the orchestra," Bocelli says with an elegant shrug.

"If you work well together, you breathe together and you experience the music all together, and things can't go wrong. We are all part of something, everybody is involved in the same way. It amazes me every time I think about it, how 80, 90 elements can do that."

"There is a glossification in music," the Australian Chamber Orchestra's Richard Tognetti told me last year.

"I mean, we are humped into the same industry as (Bocelli). It is ridiculous."

Nevertheless, Bocelli's particular and manifest appeal has brought classical music -- or semi-classical music -- to millions of people who may never have listened to it otherwise.

"I think the audience has always loved opera, as long as you give them a chance to know it," he says. "This is one of the main purposes of people who make music: being able to communicate strong feelings. It's an indication of the fact that the message has been communicated properly. When this happens it means mission accomplished." He allows himself a small satisfied smirk, as if to answer his critics.

His singular concern is to create something beautiful and resonant for the people who come to listen to him.

"The relationship with the audience is paramount. Without them, singing wouldn't mean anything. The relationship with the audience is an essential part of our job because at the end of the day you sing for the audience. At my age (49), every time you step on to the stage you ask yourself why you are doing it, and you must be able to give yourself a satisfactory answer, otherwise you feel like a puppet.

"You have to be able to give a reasonable answer to such a weird choice of job, then the answer you must give is that it is important to bring to theatres this old tradition that I believe can lead to spiritual development, especially in young people."

Bocelli grew up not far from his present home, in the idyllic vineyards of Tuscany, which his family had worked for several generations. "He had such sad eyes as a child," says his mother of his early glaucoma. "His poor, bad eyes."

"Since my childhood I had to sing everywhere, birthday parties, church school, everybody asked me to sing," he says. "I got an opera record as a present and I started learning it and then sang along for hours on end. There was a step by the fireplace in my father's kitchen that was my first stage."

Nevertheless, he was persuaded by his family to study law at the University of Pisa. "I studied with passion; many of my relatives were lawyers, so I went to university and studied diligently. It's an interesting job, but when you have a vocation for something, you end up following that." He lasted in the legal profession less than a year after graduation.

To pay for his studies, he sang Sinatra songs in the evenings in piano bars, where he met his first wife, Enrica, with whom he has two sons, Amos and Matteo. He greatly upset Italians when he ditched her and took up with the much younger Veronica Berti.

Pretty, vivacious and curvaceous, she is always at his side, working for the common cause. With her arm firmly around him, they ride bikes along the seafront, ride horses, ski.

Although already successful in Europe, Bocelli achieved wider fame with his duet with Brightman, "Time to Say Goodbye". His 1997 album "Romanza" stunned everyone when it exploded on to music charts across the world.

"In my case fame arrived late and it all happened very quickly," he says.

"Many things have changed. I now have to travel around the world and I am forced to see my friends and family much less frequently.

"On the other hand, I have people's affection, which is absolutely crucial for somebody in my line of work.

"Nobody can imagine fame because fame has no rules, it comes and goes of its own accord and this is partly the beauty of it. Inside, things are the same, though. My values are the same as ever, my mentality and beliefs I have grown up with remain unchanged."

One of Bocelli's great supporters from early on was Luciano Pavarotti. "He gave me precious advice. I think Maestro Pavarotti taught me to love our job as he loved the profession in a unique way."

The tenor is the athlete of the music world, in constant, rigorous training for the highest levels of performance.

"A major aspect of our work is silence," Bocelli says. "The day of the performance you must keep quiet all day; in the past, singers used to keep quiet for 48 hours.

"Silence is crucial to keep your voice intact. You then prepare by practising every day, by studying the repertoire and by adopting a lifestyle that resembles that of an athlete: refrain from smoking, drinking alcohol and eat moderately and healthily.

"And you have to study the music. The first stage of the study consists of learning the score in the most rigorous way and this means not only learning the notes but also the style and the composer's mind-frame at the time when it was written. After such rigorous study, you have to forget everything and make it your own."

Bocelli does his best not to get bored when he sings the same music night after night.

"It can be boring at times, but I think that if the music is beautiful and it becomes boring, the blame lies with the artist."

No matter where they go in the world or what they do, the Italians will always return -- if they can -- to the vineyard. Bocelli is a true Tuscan who has joined the generations before him in his family vineyard.

"My father and granddad made wine, but they produced it with simple means, just like the farmers of the area," he says. "Since me and my brother have taken over we have been trying to improve the quality of our wine.

"We have hired a famous oenologist to produce a good wine and our sangiovese purezza gets better and better every year."

You get the feeling as you leave that, with his poor, bad eyes, Bocelli sees things the rest of us never could.

Music and Light