by carolina1954 on Thu 18 Oct, 2007 8:23 pm
I have done a bit of translation, as not many people on here read Dutch....
If it causes a problem you can always remove it, Renate, but as it is freely available to read on the internet I cannot see it will cause copyright issues.
AB’s house is large and generous, fitting to his career. A wall and a solid steel gate separate him from the ordinary inhabitant of Forte dei Marmi.
The large living room, which looks out on an azure blue swimming pool in a simple garden, appears sombre, with dark hues, and some of the curtains remain half closed.
This is no doubt a result of Bocelli’s visual handicap. The singer was born with glaucoma and lost his sight when he was 12, due to an accident whilst playing football. Only with his right eye can he perceive a diffuse light..
Andrea , says his concerned manager, is tired. He appears dead beat.
Lying in a chair, visibly longing for a nap, he talks to his visitors, in connection with the CD Vivere, the best of Andrea Bocelli, which will appear in the shops tomorrow .
Bocelli is the classic example of an artist, who, as he says himself, communicates via his music. Journalists are not his favourite fellow people, because they are often prone to giving more importance to his love life and his blindness, than to his artistic contributions. Questionsabout those 2 subjects are therefore taboo.
There are plenty of other things to discuss with the tenor, who, like no other, creates a bridge between elitist classical music and the popular people’s songs. For example, that he would rather have been a writer.
“ Reading is my greatest pleasure – the big Russians like Tolstoi, Dostojevski, Tchechov, but equally French writers, like Balzac, Daudet and Flaubert. I can’t get enough of them. My computer is my library, I have thousands of books stored in it!
Bocelli himself wrote the autobiography La Musica del Silenzio, which appeared in 2000. and in which he, through the main character Amos, details his own life and struggles. The singer's life has all the ingredients of dramatic soap opera, with his blindness, and his divorce from wife Enrica as the low points.
Bocelli says: “ She had to share me with the rest of the world – it was not possible for Enrica to continue with that. She had every reason to complain.”
His handicap does not limit him, he is keen to stress. “ I want to show people all the things you can do without seeing. I horse ride, I ski in the Alps, sit on my own on a motorbike, accompanied by my brother. Of course I was lucky in having my voice, although people in my youth said that classical singing was not for me, because of course I could not see the conductor’s baton. But I wanted to be a great tenor”
Now he enjoys the status and life of a star, who likes to dress in Armani suits and gets chauffeured in a Bugatti. He sang with Celine Dion, Stevie Wonder and Christina Aguilera. A punishing tour schedule brings him to all corners of the world, which has already bought over 50 million of his CDs . “ I like working” he says.
By now he is immune to purist critics who abhor his forays into popular music and denigrate his style as “popera”.
“ I popularised classical music without losing my integrity. I have unlocked a treasure chest which appeared impossible to access for a lot of people. That I regard as my main contribution.”