Andrea Bocelli

A world-renowned blind tenor, Andrea Bocelli made his name with his 1995 performance of "Con Te Partiro", and has followed a career marked by triumphs on stage and varied recordings in the classical crossover register. Born in Lajatico, Tuscany, on September 22, 1958, Andrea Bocelli suffers from a hereditary form of glaucoma. He grew up on a farm near Pisa, and took an early interest in opera and traditional Italian song, listening to the great tenors of the 20th century. He learned to play several instruments, including piano, flute, trumpet and guitar, and was noticed for his powerful, polished voice. At the age of fourteen, he won a singing competition in Viareggio and went on to study law at the University of Pisa, where he obtained a doctorate. After lessons in opera singing with Franco Corelli, he impressed Zucchero and Sarah Brightman, with whom he recorded what was to become an international hit in 1995, "Con te partirò", which reached no. 1 in several European countries, including Germany, where it is the best-selling single in history, and no. 2 in the UK. His career soon moved into the realm of classical crossover, including opera arias, interpretations of pop and film standards, Christmas songs and Neapolitan classics. Since Romanza (1996) and her French chart-topper, the duet "Vivo per lei" with Hélène Ségara (No. 1), her albums sold worldwide have been certified gold or platinum. After winning the Grammy Award for Artist of the Year in 1999, Andrea Bocelli wins a Golden Globe for the duet "The Prayer" with Céline Dion. The success of the album Sogno is followed by Sacred Arias, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the best-selling album by a classical artist. Numerous recordings followed, including the Sentimento recital (2002), the complete operas Manon and Werther by Massenet with conductor Steven Mercurio, the best-selling album My Christmas (2009), and collections of arias by Verdi and Puccini. Programmed at New York's Madison Square Garden and in China, the tenor has performed duets with Stevie Wonder, Christina Aguilera, Tony Bennett, Jennifer Lopez, Nelly Furtado and Barbra Streisand, and sang at the closing ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin and at the European Champion Clubs Football Cup final in Rome in 2009. In 2014, after the previous year's album of Passione duets, Puccini's operas Manon Lescaut conducted by Plácido Domingo and Turandot by Zubin Mehta were recorded, and 2015 saw the release of the box set The Complete Pop Albums, followed by the recital Cinema (2016) and the traditional Italian arias of Sì (ranked #1 on both sides of the Atlantic in 2018), featuring Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Josh Groban, Aida Garifullina and her son Matteo Bocelli. In 2020, Cecilia Bartoli is invited to the sessions of the Believe album, released before a world tour and a "Nessum dorma" performed during the final of the 2020 European Football Championship, postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, his daughter Virginia Bocelli, then aged 10, appeared for the first time alongside him and her older brother Matteo Bocelli (born 1997), on the family album A Family Christmas.

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