BetteTheRed
Resident Heretic
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Her
And a lot of control and training to keep it tonally correct throughout a wide octave range. That's where I find Bocelli falls down for me. He lacks the range of a truly great operatic tenor like Pavarotti and tends to get a bit husky in the lower registers of his range. There's a recording of them singing Miserere together at one of the Pavarotti and friends concerts and even though Pav was near the end of his career (and, sadly, life) at that point, he still has both more power and more range than Bocelli.
As for him being a classical tenor, I'm not sure. He's great at pop tenor repertoire like O Sole Mio! and the contemporary pop music he sings, but I've never heard him do classical lieder or religious works. I imagine he's good at it, but I just haven't heard enough of him doing it. I have heard him sing Rudolfo in La Boheme and some arias from other operas which is what led to conclude he isn't really a good operatic singer.
I've got most of his early CDs, thanks to my Mom; there's 2 or 3 classical ones. And of course, singing opera on a CD and singing opera to a live house are also two different things...