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Beijing welcomes Bocelli
Andrea Bocelli is coming to China for the third time.
Bocelli made his Chinese debut last December with a sell-out concert in Shanghai, where the audience demanded three encores. Tickets for his Hong Kong concert in May were the most expensive the city had ever known for a concert. Now it is the turn of Beijing's music lovers to experience his voice. Bocelli will go on stage in front of about 6,000 people at the Great Hall of the People on October 15, with a programme that will feature a variety of music from baroque to opera arias, folk songs and pop hits. The concert should demonstrate the power of his unique voice and its ability to overcome the barriers of language and culture. Eight visually-impaired Chinese girls and two boys will be selected to join Bocelli in action. The show will also contribute to the Sun Fund for Education Assistance and the Beijing Yingzhibao Children's Arts Fund to help children in Beijing's poor families. The Sun Fund is managed by the Beijing Youth Foundation. Ten of the most expensive tickets, each with a face value of 2,900 yuan (US$350), will be sold for 5,000 yuan (US$604). The extra 2,100 yuan (US$254) will be shared between the two funds and each will get an autographed picture of the star. Ticket prices range from 2,900 yuan to 300 yuan (US$350 to US$36), which is relatively high for Beijing. But local sponsors are quite confident about box-office receipts. "Bocelli is the most popular operatic tenor after the Three Tenors. He is a super star cross-over between the opera and the pop genres. I think people will be queuing up for the concert," says Hu Jingyu, general manager of the Beijing GHTY Arts & Culture Co Ltd, who are presenting the show. Local classical music critic Lun Bing said "Bocelli is one of opera's most important and unexpected innovations." In the world of opera, as with any other musical genre, some are regarded as legendary because of the talent they have and what they have achieved and continue to achieve. For many years, the Three Tenors - Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti - have been regarded as not only the most formidable but also irreplaceable. All that seemed to change overnight in 1992, when a then totally unknown tenor, Andrea Bocelli, burst into the classical music scene to lead opera into a Renaissance age. He appeared at a time when people were talking about the demise of the operatic genre, with theatres dismally half empty, record sales slumping and the virtual disappearance of opera from television schedules. This "modern tenor in the old style" sang with clear, precise intonation in an almost fanatical search for perfection and exquisite taste, which together gave him an extremely rare ability to adopt an instrumentalist approach to a score rather than a singer's. All this is combined with highly personal and persuasive vocal colour and perfect diction, tinged with a subtle melancholy that goes straight to the hearts of listeners and is the reason for his spectacular success. Born on a farm in the Tuscany region of Italy, Bocelli lost his sight because of congenital glaucoma and an accident at the age 12, but displayed a talent for music and dreamed of becoming an opera singer. His mother once talked about the child who "stopped crying only when he heard opera." But more than talent, what catapulted Bocelli to the top of his class was his courage and strength. "My blindness has never been a tragedy to me, I don't know why it should be a tragedy to others," he has often said. After all, composer Beethoven was deaf. He took inspiration from the words of French novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "You see clearly only through your heart. The essential is invisible to your eyes." Before embarking on a make-or-break attempt at singing, Bocelli graduated as a Doctor of Law from the University of Pisa and spent a year as a lawyer. He then learned opera from Maestro Luciano Bettarini, teacher of many great names including Ferruccio Tagliavini, Ettore Bastianini and Franco Corelli. To pay the fees Andrea performed at night in piano bars and clubs. In 1992 a chain of events accelerated Andrea from piano bar performer to international super stardom. Italian rock legend Zucchero held auditions for tenors to make a demo tape of the duet "Miserere," a track co-written with U2's Bono, in attempt to persuade Pavarotti to record the song. Bocelli was one of the tenors auditioned. Zucchero recalled: "Andrea was just unbelievable. He had something not one of the other tenors possessed. He had soul." When Pavarotti received the demo, he was extremely impressed with Andrea's voice, "Zucchero! Who is this guy?" Pavarotti demanded. "Thank you for writing such a wonderful song. Yet you do not need me to sing it - let Andrea sing with you, for there is no one finer." Although Zucchero convinced Pavorotti to record "Miserere" with him, and the duo scored a Europe-wide smash hit, he invited Bocelli to perform the duet in place of Pavarotti on his European tour. Decisive debut In 1993 Zucchero helped jump-start Bocelli's recording career when he invited him to sing "Miserere" and "Nessun Dorma" at his birthday party. Present at the gathering, Caterina Caselli, president of Sugar Records, the Milan-based music label that specifies in contracting the most famous Italian artists, signed Bocelli immediately after hearing him sing. In 1994, Bocelli made his stage debut in a small role in Verdi's "Macbeth" in Pisa, Mantova, Lucca and Livorno. This decisive debut under the banner of Verdi, one of the tenor's greatest sources of inspiration, along with his favourite Puccini, was followed by the CD "Viaggio italiano," released in 1995. In 1996 the song "Time to Say Goodbye," which he did with Sarah Brightman, spent 14 weeks on top of the German singles chart, on its way to become Germany's best-selling single of all time. Sarah Brightman, the internationally-famous soprano, heard Bocelli's "Con Te Partiro" in a restaurant while dining with her friends. Entranced by the singer and the song, Brightman made contact with him. He and Brightman re-recorded "Con Te Partiro" as the duet "Time to Say Goodbye" with members of the London Symphony Orchestra. His duet with Celine Dion in "The Prayer" for the movie "Quest for Camelot" was another milestone. It established him as a star in the United States, winning him a Golden Globe. Further victories followed, catapulting Bocelli as one of only a handful of operatic stars to cross over into the pop realm. Alternating on the podium for his concerts are superstars like Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa and Valery Gergiev. In 1998, he joined Zubin Mehta for a major concert in Tel Aviv. The celebrated conductor was so enthusiastic about Bocelli's gifts that he publicly praised the Tuscan tenor's musicality, preparation and taste. The same year saw the release of the album "Aria," one of the biggest classical successes of all time, leaping immediately to the top of the charts. Since then the Bocelli myth, reinforced by his enormous success as a recording artist, has grown out of all proportion. It's not usual that a CD by an opera star cracks the pop chart. But the Italian tenor's albums have also regularly topped the pop charts since the "Three Tenors in Concert" in 1994. He has won dozens of gold and platinum discs in Germany, Britain, Belgium, Argentina, Canada, the Czech Republic, Australia and of course his native Italy. In the autumn of 2003, his classical recording career continued when he joined forces with Maestro Lorin Maazel to release "Sentimento," an album of songs exploring the early 20th century musical tradition for voice and violin. On the album, Maazel plays his 1722 Stradivarius. When Maazel conducted Bocelli for the first time in concert a few years ago, he was struck by Bocelli's voice. "I noticed a similarity in timbre - it has a sort of spin to it, and those easy top notes. This tradition is all about the interweaving of the overtones of the violin with the overtones only a high tenor can produce." A huge success, the album was awarded two highly coveted UK Brit Awards for Album of the Year and the Best Selling Classical Album of the Year at the 2003 Awards Ceremony. Love for opera Critics are divided over his talent: some see him as the ideal interpreter of the new age of opera and others dismiss him as a pop tenor. Yes, Bocelli is notably a singer of sentimental pop ballads and his fame owes as much to Celine Dion and Sarah Brightman as to Verdi or Puccini, but he considers himself foremost a classical musician and operatic tenor. And for any who might question his devotion to classical music, Bocelli says, "I'm not really very interested in pop... My music is opera." He adds that opera, which he has adored and sung since childhood, is all he listens to. Beyond the virtues and the defects that can be found in his, and every other artist's vocal style, one thing is certain. Bocelli is a myth and so at the same time a natural advertisement for a genre
that the majority of youngsters think is antiquated and obsolete and belongs in
a museum.
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