Andrea video clips and interview

xcept · Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2006 10:35 pm Post subject: Andrea video clips and interview

There are video clips and an interview with Andrea (2004) on this link Very Happy

http://www.winamp.com/videos/browse.php?filter=Y&start=16&shownum=5&genre=3&mtype=V

kcuteus · Joined: Jan 14, 2006 Posts: 172

thanks

Evanthia · Joined: Feb 06, 2006 Posts: 4

http://music.aol.com/artist/main.adp?tab=songvid&artistid=141762

xcept · Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 7:51 pm Post subject:

an interview from 2005 Smile

Fourth Tenor's critics are silenced by song.
ROSIE DIMANNO

A great many of us like to sing in the shower, performing behind a plastic curtain, maybe even using the shampoo bottle as a pretend-microphone.

Me, I'm still Janis Joplin: "Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz ..."

Andrea Bocelli does no such thing.

"The shower is a very small place and my voice is too powerful. That would give me a headache. In the shower, it is better to be silent."

While his may be one of the most magnificent singing voices in the world ‚Äî 50 million albums sold ‚Äî the pipes are not always appreciated 'round la casa. His two young sons have been known to plead: "Please dad, STOP!"

Everybody's a critic. And critics, those who cavil for a living, haven't always been so kind to Bocelli either, despite his spectacular popularity and the endless encomiums from fans.

Known widely, fondly, as "The Fourth Tenor" ‚Äî an operatic addendum to the holy trinity of Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras ‚Äî Bocelli maintains a staggering live performance schedule, a touring regimen that will bring the 41-year-old Italian to the Air Canada Centre next Thursday.

He's sung for the Pope, presidents, royalty, at Ground Zero, at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, the Oscars, for countless charity benefits, most recently in aid of tsunami relief.

Celine Dion, with whom he recorded a duet, famously (and to his unending embarrassment) once said of the tenor: "If God had a singing voice, he would sound a lot like Andrea Bocelli."

He has been the No. 1 classical recording artist on the planet every year since 1997, collecting more platinum discs than any classical soloist in recording industry history.

And yet, perhaps because he doesn't look the part ‚Äî not fat, not so sweaty in full throttle that he needs to mop constantly at his brow, and decidedly not diva-theatrical in presentation ‚Äî Bocelli hasn't quite earned the five-star reviews from the tall foreheads who best know their Carmen from their Aida. Wrote the lead opera critic for The New York Times: "When it comes to traditional opera repertoire, Bocelli is not a great tenor. When he ventures to sing without amplification, he lacks the training to project his voice."

One can almost hear the shrug in Bocelli's shoulders, down the telephone line from Italy, whence he gave the Toronto Star an interview yesterday. "The critics were much nicer to me in the beginning. But when you've had big success, they get tougher. I don't really care," he says.

The problem is likely that Bocelli is too popular with the populist scruff and that his music is not relentlessly elitist. His gravitas has suffered because of his crossover success, all that "pop-op," middle-of-the-road standards, romantic ballads, Neapolitan love songs (which never hurt Pavarotti) and lots of "Classic Lite." Nor has he been particularly well-served by his matinee-idol good looks.

Opera is indisputably Bocelli's favourite musical form, the essence of his vocal being. But he's also noted that classical music can be "like a train that can't leave its tracks," rigidly stuck in its formal environment, its historical roots.

"It's often forgotten that classical music was born of the people and for the people," he says. "It is the music of the soul, of the heart.

"I don't think I've sacrificed my reputation just because I also sing pop music. That doesn't mean that I feel the emotion of opera any less in my soul."

Yet snobbery is a factor among classical connoisseurs, as if the unwashed masses can't quite penetrate its sophistication, its beauty. And for an opera star to sing with the likes of Bono or Celine Dion is somehow sacrilegious. Pshaw ‚Äî or the Italian equivalent thereof ‚Äî says Bocelli, further asserting that he would love to record with, say, Mariah Carey or Christina Aguilera. Even Britney Spears. "Yes, why not Britney Spears?"

Though he won his first singing honours at age 12 ‚Äî "O Sole Mio" at a competition in his native Pisa ‚Äî Bocelli came quite late to his career, even after claiming another notable performance title at the San Remo Festival. While he sang throughout his childhood ‚Äî says he was reduced to tears of wonder the first time he heard an operatic tenor ‚Äî and played the organ at his parish, music seemed an improbable professional dream for the man lauded now as the "Tenor of our Time."

It was also in his 12th year that Bocelli went completely blind, a subject that he doesn't wish to discuss. What's known is that he suffered from glaucoma since infancy, but his vision was lost entirely after a freak soccer accident. Yet he persevered, continuing to hone, however informally, his singing and instrumental talents.

Bocelli actually trained as a lawyer and worked for a year as a prosecutor in Turin, spending his evenings tinkling the ivories as a pianist-lounge singer at local bistros, performing covers of Frank Sinatra hits. His tastes have always been eclectic.

Critics claim Bocelli lacks proper training as an opera artist and never did learn to sing effectively from his diaphragm, can't project his voice sufficiently. That's not quite factual. Bocelli trained with his childhood hero, the tenor maestro Franco Corelli, auditioning for him with an aria from La Boh?©me. It's debatable whether Bocelli has the vocal resonance of a Pavarotti or Caruso, but there is an ethereal, intoxicating quality to his voice, a sense of both power and fragility that has seduced millions. And he never misses those tricky low notes.

His prodigious recording and performing itinerary might seem to leave little time for anything else. But in Italy, Bocelli has become a high-profile advocate for the custodial rights of fathers when marriages fall apart.

Divorced after 13 years, Bocelli fought hard for shared custody of his sons, an outrageous concept in Italy's overwhelmingly matriarchal society, where children are considered near exclusively the property of their mothers.

But a dogged Bocelli secured shared custody ‚Äî affido condiviso ‚Äî by which he gets the boys two afternoons a week and every other weekend. He also bought the house next door to the family residence in order to make everything run more smoothly.

"There are many interests to take into consideration when a husband and wife get into a fight over their children," says Bocelli. "Only the lawyers seem to win in the end. My wife and I came to an agreement, eventually, but the law itself hasn't actually changed yet. We're hoping that will happen within the next year."

source:Toronto Star 2005

xcept · Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 5:29 pm Post subject:

Andrea interview Mp3 - thanks to Nettie1199 for finding it Very Happy

http://www.daisymedia.co.uk/