Classically trained singer Andrea Bocelli's dream of hosting a 'Woodstock' dedicated to opera and popular Italian songs will take shape next month with a concert in his home town of Lajatico, in Tuscany.
The July 27 event, which will see the opera-crossover tenor backed by a full symphony orchestra and chorus, will be staged in an amphitheatre which has as its backdrop the medieval city of Volterra and the Alta Caldera park. The architects who designed the venue, who included Bocelli's brother, have named it the 'Theatre of Silence' because for the rest of the year only nature's silence will reign.
Bocelli will be the only performer in this first edition of the open air festival, but from next year he intends to invite a slew of international classical music stars to join him. Speaking after his triumphant concert at Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl this past weekend, Bocelli made a point of differentiating between his initiative and the 'Pavarotti & Friends' concerts hosted by famed tenor Luciano Pavarotti.
"Once a year we will host a concert of beautiful music. I hope to bring people from all over the world to perform some of the greatest and immortal opera arias, especially Italian, along with classic Italian songs," Bocelli explained. Pavarotti & Friends, on the other hand, saw the tenor invite leading international entertainers to duet with him on both classical and pop songs.
It was a charity event and in its ten-year run the star-studded concert raised more than 10.5 million euros to help finance aid programs around the world and to build schools and hospitals. The concert has not been staged since May 2003 because of the difficulties organizers had that year with the Italian state broadcaster RAI over its live broadcast.
The Hollywood Bowl concert, attended by over 18,000 fans, provided a preview to the Tuscan event with Bocelli performing a full range of opera and evergreen tunes as well as several classic Italian hits including 'Funiculi Funicola'. Bocelli, 47, is probably Italy's most bankable music star after pop princess Laura Pausini, who recently became the first Italian woman to win a Grammy.
After blasting to international fame in the mid-1990s with his signature number Con Te Partiro' (Time to Say Goodbye), Bocelli performed at the Vatican, the White House, the Kennedy Center and a host of world music shrines. He completed a second triumphant American tour in 2002 and picked up two World Music Awards. Since then he has performed at the NBA's 2006 All-Star Weekend in Houston and at the closing ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.
