Biography

The word “crossover” has many nuances in the modern record industry. A tenor with vast appeal to a pop-orientated audience is usually, by implication, one who will find little welcome among devotees of the operatic art. Into such an arena, with a talent to unite two large audiences and make one vast one, steps Vittorio Grigolo.   

Born in Rome but brought up in Arezzo near Florence, Vittorio has honed a reputation as one of the most talented tenors of his generation. He has had a residency in the international operatic arena for half his life, performing in Japan, America and all points between. Now the time has arrived for the 28-year-old craftsman of song to augment his admirable resum?© of live work with a distinguished debut album, In The Hands Of Love.   

While “popera” artists proliferate to left and right, Vittorio’s 14-song collection speaks of an artist determined to set the creative bar much higher. Ahead of an examination of the album’s elegant contents, a check through Vittorio’s 2006 diary is instructional.

He is just starting a season of performances as Cassio in a production of Verdi’s Otello at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Barcelona Opera House, under the musical direction of Antoni Ros Marbà. In April, he will give a showcase performance for the new album in New York, at a prestigious reception and awards show given by NIAF, the non-profit organisation that has honored prominent business leaders and entertainers of Italian descent over the past three decades. An American release of In The Hands Of Love is already confirmed for June.

Key to the album’s uniquely wide appeal, with Italian, Spanish and English treatments, is Vittorio’s confident vocal embrace of both contemporary popular melodies, and the introduction of new compositions. Opera has developed a reputation as a difficult genre for new works, but it is a convention that Grigolo flaunts triumphantly on this collection, on pieces such as Tu Sei, Miracolo, Magia De Amor and Butterfly Forever, all of them turned with confident, surefooted sensitivity by the tenor.

Like any true artist, Vittorio invests his performances with true belief and commitment, and the honesty of his vocal endeavour is equally plain on his treatments of some highly sympathetic ballads: Stevie Wonder’s timeless All In Love Is Fair (Se L’Amore C’e), Daniel Bedingfield’s If You’re Not The One (Se Tu Non Sei Lei) and, perhaps most inventively, an interpretation of Keane’s Bedshaped (Cosi) that reinvests the song with fresh romantic drama.     

Vittorio’s predilection for the operatic discipline is undeniable, but the question of why a young Italian with a love of motorbikes would be drawn to the genre is equally irresistible. He answers with certainty, gesturing towards his chest. "I liked pop, but I wanted to use my body,” he says. “In opera, you use your whole body. With pop, it''s more breath. With opera, you use essentially the diaphragm. You have a macho, military regime, and you need to know music, the tempo, the notes."

Blessed with such a voice, Vittorio’s decision to pursue music was that of someone magnetically drawn to a true vocation. Encouraged by his father, who played opera in the car while driving him to school, he was singing arias around the house by the time he was four years old. At nine, a chance meeting in a Rome opticians led him to be chosen for the revered Sistine Chapel Choir, where he soon became a soloist, "in the little bambino choir.”

Still not yet in his teens, he progressed to an invitation to sing Tosca with Pavarotti at the Rome opera theatre. The maestro was so impressed by his young co-star that after the performance,  he enthused about him to the press, who dubbed him il Pavarottino: the "little Pavarotti.”

From there, Vittorio’s fledgling career made great strides. At 18, he was singing with the Vienna opera company, and at 23, he became the youngest Italian tenor ever to sing at Milan''s La Scala. Vittorio was also the first Italian male to be excused from compulsory military service, his career being deemed so promising that it was considered imprudent to interrupt it.

There was a less foreseeable diversion on the road ahead, when Vittorio was distracted by his other passion. His love for motor racing could have turned into a career in itself, especially after he got through to the Pre-3000 Formula race in the Italian championships, and briefly became immersed in the racing world.  "But somebody bumped my kart in a race,” he recalls, “and I had to cancel a concert in Rome because I hurt my ribs and couldn''t sing. So I had to decide between racing and singing."

We now know which of his talents won the day. He sold the kart — keeping his Porsche and motorbike — and pursued his operatic vocation with renewed determination. Not least on behalf of his father, himself a would-be tenor in his younger days. “He said, ''Do it for me''!” That''s the kind of plea that carries a lot of weight when you''re the only child in an Italian family.

The performance world into which he stepped included the role of Riff in a production of West Side Story at La Scala, where he met with great acclaim and worked with the renowned American actor James (Tony Soprano) Gandolfino, who was playing Riff''s gangland buddy Tony.

That production did more than just inspire the performance of Maria that closes his album. It led Vittorio to start considering the concept of exploring music through a wide lens, of marrying musical disciplines that often turn their nose up at each other. “Fate intervened,” he recalls, “and I met Eric Ghenassia [now his manager and executive producer, who has worked with Pavarotti, Alessandro Safina and Elton John] and Eric''s longtime friend Romano Musumarra [the hugely respected Italian composer, conductor, producer and songwriter, who has worked with Pavarotti, Alessandro Safina, Elton John and Celine Dion].

“Romano said, ''I''d like you to sing one of my songs.'' I tried it, and it was really difficult at first, adapting his songs to my voice. And then...I realised I could do it."

That is why In The Hands Of Love, recorded in Rome, has such an assured aura. It showcases the work of a vocalist who is effortlessly versatile, and one who remembers where he comes from. In his deal with Eric Ghenassia and Universal he has insisted on a contractual clause allowing him to perform three operas a year, in the interests of keeping his vocal chords oiled. "Opera is gymnastics for the voice,” says Vittorio Grigolo. In which case, he is a gold-medal athlete indeed.