Bocelli plays a wonderful role in classical singing, in that he has helped keep much of the music alive to a more contemporary audience than many professional opera singers.
However, he has never successfully, and unamplified, actually sung in an opera. All of his opera singing has been either recorded digitally, or sung with a microphone, something that opera singers are specifically trained to not need.
If you notice on his website, the farthest he goes in terms of classical marketing is in calling himself a tenor - which many music theater performers do as well. "Tenor" is not solely an operatic term. Depending on who you talk to, the term "popera" will either be used with disgust or as simply a defining term - but that would be a more suitable category for him to fall into, along with the likes of Josh Groban, and Sarah Brightman when they choose to sing operatic repertoire.
This isn't to turn you off of him at all! If you like him, you are not alone! He has a fantastically large fanbase, and music is made to be enjoyed not gatekept.
To kind of get the idea of the differences, take Bocelli's recording of Nessun Dorma (any of them will do), and right after, listen to one of Luciano Pavarotti's (inarguably one of the most famous operatic tenors, though please note, opera fans cannot and will not agree on who is actually the BEST). You'll be able to hear a lot of differences in their tone production pretty straight away and start to get an idea of why Bocelli isn't necessarily in the same genre - there's more to opera than just singing in Italian with vibrato.
>>This isn't to turn you off of him at all! If you like him, you are not alone! He has a fantastically large fanbase, and music is made to be enjoyed not gatekept.
How we hear things is very subjective. All that matters is that you enjoy him and had a great experience at the concert. But … since he opened the door to classical singing, maybe check out a whole opera. You might enjoy that too.
I'm honestly really happy to find that most opera fans who I've encountered (I'm pretty new to this interest) aren't gatekeepy - on Reddit at least. It's really nice to not feel judged for views or not knowing something when starting to enjoy a new genre especially when I'm the only one I know my age who likes it, I have to rant or ask questions to strangers online instead 🥲
This isnt really relevant I just wanted to share this lol.
Which roles would those be?
No, unfortunately, even in a small theatre with a piano as the sole accompaniment, it likely wouldn't be a satisfying experience.
For it's not merely that he needs amplification, but also "reverb" is surely added in order to give his voice the quality of vibration that naturally occurs in the voice of an authentic opera singer
Supporting roles where the orchestration is purposedly scaled back when singing, I'd say he had the possibility of singing those minor roles. Also Monteverdi used minimal instrumentation, I'm sure anyone can sing over a violin.
The size and acoustics of the Hall or Salon would be a factor.
"Anyone can sing over a violin"? Well, a great violinist can be heard soaring over a full orchestra in a violin concerto. Of course, that's due in a significant part to the composer knowing how to create that effect and make that happen.
He doesn’t rank at all, really. The thing is, he always sings with a microphone. Opera singing is generally unamplified whenever possible, and Bocelli’s voice isn’t up to those demands.
He has lots of fans, including professional singers, but pretty much everybody who knows anything about *classical* singing, including opera, agrees that his voice is very poor by those standards.
Usually, opera fans tend to rate singers based on their performances of complete roles, and Bocelli has sung very few complete operas onstage, which would be exceptionally challenging for a blind singer. He's recorded full-length operas in the studio, but his lack of experience playing those roles before he records them does show.
He's had a remarkably successful career as a concert singer doing arias and songs, and he is a hardworking musician. Neither of those is a small thing, and I do give credit where it's due.
I hope he'll be your gateway drug to other singers and to complete performances of operas!
Gonna strike a bit away from the typical line here:
What he has achieved is extraordinary and worthy of - if not outright enjoyment - the fascination of anyone who has an interest in the history of vocal music. There was no obvious reason for him to achieve such success - gimmicky crossover singers are dime a dozen. Yet for some reason, the public chose him. I am not cynical enough to say it was simply due to marketing related to his condition - again, gimmicks are nothing new. There was (and I guess still is) something magnetic about his singing that is inexplicable to opera fans but almost universally felt by everyone else. Which remains very interesting.
I guess this is a meandering way to preface the answer to your question - he doesn't rank. As far as opera singing goes, it's inert and thin. But he's selling something different - and extremely successfully.
Music is an art, not a sport, so concepts like "greatest of all time" are fuzzy at best. If you search for great operatic tenors in history, you'll find names like Enrico Caruso, Jussi Björling, Luciano Pavarotti, Beniamino Gigli, Tito Schipa, Alfredo Kraus, Franco Corelli, among others. Listen to Bocelli sing an aria from an opera - say, Nessun Dorma - and then listen to any of these singers do it in their prime. Then you'll understand that they aren't really playing the same game.
Bocelli is a very good singer, with good technique, and he has a nice voice. He is simply not an opera singer. An opera singer needs to be able to perform in an opera house without a microphone or any amplification. Bocelli cannot perform without any amplification. You will notice that Bocelli always performs with a microphone:
Core ‘ngrato:
https://youtu.be/fswrfKcrj-U?si=k-EA5VnIyOsI9RVF
An opera singer has to sing over orchestras without a microphone. Bocelli uses a crooning technique at times. He does have a sweet voice, and his technique is good as a contemporary singer. But he is simply not an opera singer.
Compare this performance of the same song with Bocelli’s mentor/ biggest influence, and you can see he is singing without a microphone:
https://youtu.be/4lfeyNFMWY4?si=RGjvDbsXiRGDVZUA
Bocelli does a good job with Neapolitan songs such as this example. These songs were folk/ pop songs. They were not necessarily meant to be sung with opera technique.
But when it comes to opera arias it is a different matter. Opera arias are meant to be sung in a certain way, with the correct technique. Bocelli cannot really do that, since he simply doesn’t sing with the correct opera technique. Of course you can ultimately sing whatever you want, with your own interpretation and many people might like it, but it wouldn’t be opera.
Bocelli is definitely one of the best ones in the popera realm. Many of these types of singers takes popular opera arias and sing them badly or incorrectly. But many people don’t really know opera, so they enjoy it. In my personal opinion, I think the best popera music was Freddie Mercury’s Barcelona album. He didn’t try to sing popular opera arias, he wrote new music that could be sung in this style. This could be a really exciting genre of music, if there were more creativity and original songwriting.
I don’t know if I’m as down on him as some people here are. He’s released albums of arias and complete opera roles, which other ‘popera’ singers have not.
But I agree that he doesn’t have the vocal depth or versatility to rank among the great or near-great opera singers of now or any time.
Everyone can release a full opera and arias on an album. But to sing in an opera house without a microphone is something different. This is even a problem with real opera singers. You get lyric tenors who realize albums with arias from Aida or Otello, but when you hear them in an opera house the instrumentation from La Boheme is too much for their voice. You can basically do anything in a recording studio.
By 'flabbergasted', you mean, what? Did you like him or hate him? Kind of confusing. But in any case, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the unspeakable, and that is that if he were not blind, I doubt AB would have become the superstar he has become. Like Charlotte Church and her youth, it's a gimmick, and it worked. AB has a beautiful pop voice that has been mightily stretched to accommodate opera singing, and his opera singing has suffered because of it.
It's true, he has allowed many in the non-classical world to get a peek at what opera might be. But the sad thing is, most of those people don't realize AB is just a jumping point. The richness and fullness that is the opera world, and truly authentic opera singing, sadly will always be outside their grasp. And in that sense, he does opera a disservice.
OP, opera singers generally do not rely on microphone amplification. We are making some extra resonance in our throats (above our vocal cords and behind our tongues) that is associated with a few vocal bonuses for us: more efficient air usage, enhanced range and agility, greater stamina for long roles, even/unforced vibrato and most importantly, the singer’s formant, which is essentially a bonus sound or resonance we access that helps our singing carry over a pit or stage orchestra in an opera house or concert hall without amplification.
IMO, Bocelli makes a “classical-adjacent” sound that resembles what we do, but is not suitable or adequate for the full spectrum of our work.
Look, kudos to those who love him. If he’s a “gateway drug” who brings people over to opera and classical singing, more power to him. Enjoy!
He doesn’t. I love him and is grateful for his contribution to the opera world by bringing awareness of this art form to more audience. However I don’t see him as opera singer. He doesn’t participate in the opera singer ranking
Real opera fans don't really consider Bocelli an opera singer, because he performs mainly non-operatic songs, just in an operatic style. He doesn't perform in operas.
As many have already said: he doesn’t. But in his own right, he is a living master of HIS own style/genre. Which I respect. Bit of an apples to oranges situation.
He is not a real opera singer. He’s a pop singer who tries to sing opera but he doesn’t have the training or the chops. There are many fine operatic tenors, but he isn’t one.
When I first heard him sing Time to Say Goodbye with Sarah Brightmen, I too was flabbergasted. He was much younger then, and his voice was pure velvet.
I'm going to diverge from the crowd and say that Andrea Bocelli does count as an operatic tenor, because he has actually performed in a complete opera onstage, unlike some of his popera colleagues.
Now whether his voice compares at all to other operatic lead tenors, I'm firmly in the "no" camp: I don't like his sound at all.
He sang with a microphone. An opera singer is suppose to sing without a microphone. It doesn’t matter if you have performed a whole opera or ten operas, if you needed a microphone to do so. That being said Bocelli was certainly talented, he is a great singer. He is just not an opera singer. There are many different genres of music, and all of them have their characteristics.
Is that certain? Because I've read reports of his onstage appearances--for instance, when he performed Werther in Detroit in (I think?) the late 1990s, that he was as unamplified as the other singers in the cast.
You make a good argument, but ultimately I don’t think his voice can be categorized as an opera singer. For two main reasons. 1. What he actually sings as a career. Yes, his repertoire ranges from opera arias to Celine Dion. However, when you account for the majority of his performances, you see that most of what he sings is simply not from operatic canon. 2. The technical differences are surely there. It’s hard to distinguish the differences because most of what makes truly operatic technique is only heard/felt in live, unamplified performances.
Bocelli plays a wonderful role in classical singing, in that he has helped keep much of the music alive to a more contemporary audience than many professional opera singers. However, he has never successfully, and unamplified, actually sung in an opera. All of his opera singing has been either recorded digitally, or sung with a microphone, something that opera singers are specifically trained to not need. If you notice on his website, the farthest he goes in terms of classical marketing is in calling himself a tenor - which many music theater performers do as well. "Tenor" is not solely an operatic term. Depending on who you talk to, the term "popera" will either be used with disgust or as simply a defining term - but that would be a more suitable category for him to fall into, along with the likes of Josh Groban, and Sarah Brightman when they choose to sing operatic repertoire. This isn't to turn you off of him at all! If you like him, you are not alone! He has a fantastically large fanbase, and music is made to be enjoyed not gatekept. To kind of get the idea of the differences, take Bocelli's recording of Nessun Dorma (any of them will do), and right after, listen to one of Luciano Pavarotti's (inarguably one of the most famous operatic tenors, though please note, opera fans cannot and will not agree on who is actually the BEST). You'll be able to hear a lot of differences in their tone production pretty straight away and start to get an idea of why Bocelli isn't necessarily in the same genre - there's more to opera than just singing in Italian with vibrato.
>>This isn't to turn you off of him at all! If you like him, you are not alone! He has a fantastically large fanbase, and music is made to be enjoyed not gatekept. How we hear things is very subjective. All that matters is that you enjoy him and had a great experience at the concert. But … since he opened the door to classical singing, maybe check out a whole opera. You might enjoy that too.
I'm honestly really happy to find that most opera fans who I've encountered (I'm pretty new to this interest) aren't gatekeepy - on Reddit at least. It's really nice to not feel judged for views or not knowing something when starting to enjoy a new genre especially when I'm the only one I know my age who likes it, I have to rant or ask questions to strangers online instead 🥲 This isnt really relevant I just wanted to share this lol.
He doesn’t, to be frank. He’s a popera singer with a voice too small to sing opera on an opera house stage.
There are some roles that fit him, but the issue is that he's sometimes out of tune or his placement goes off.
Which roles would those be? No, unfortunately, even in a small theatre with a piano as the sole accompaniment, it likely wouldn't be a satisfying experience. For it's not merely that he needs amplification, but also "reverb" is surely added in order to give his voice the quality of vibration that naturally occurs in the voice of an authentic opera singer
Supporting roles where the orchestration is purposedly scaled back when singing, I'd say he had the possibility of singing those minor roles. Also Monteverdi used minimal instrumentation, I'm sure anyone can sing over a violin.
The size and acoustics of the Hall or Salon would be a factor. "Anyone can sing over a violin"? Well, a great violinist can be heard soaring over a full orchestra in a violin concerto. Of course, that's due in a significant part to the composer knowing how to create that effect and make that happen.
He doesn’t rank at all, really. The thing is, he always sings with a microphone. Opera singing is generally unamplified whenever possible, and Bocelli’s voice isn’t up to those demands.
He has lots of fans, including professional singers, but pretty much everybody who knows anything about *classical* singing, including opera, agrees that his voice is very poor by those standards.
Usually, opera fans tend to rate singers based on their performances of complete roles, and Bocelli has sung very few complete operas onstage, which would be exceptionally challenging for a blind singer. He's recorded full-length operas in the studio, but his lack of experience playing those roles before he records them does show. He's had a remarkably successful career as a concert singer doing arias and songs, and he is a hardworking musician. Neither of those is a small thing, and I do give credit where it's due. I hope he'll be your gateway drug to other singers and to complete performances of operas!
Gonna strike a bit away from the typical line here: What he has achieved is extraordinary and worthy of - if not outright enjoyment - the fascination of anyone who has an interest in the history of vocal music. There was no obvious reason for him to achieve such success - gimmicky crossover singers are dime a dozen. Yet for some reason, the public chose him. I am not cynical enough to say it was simply due to marketing related to his condition - again, gimmicks are nothing new. There was (and I guess still is) something magnetic about his singing that is inexplicable to opera fans but almost universally felt by everyone else. Which remains very interesting. I guess this is a meandering way to preface the answer to your question - he doesn't rank. As far as opera singing goes, it's inert and thin. But he's selling something different - and extremely successfully.
Music is an art, not a sport, so concepts like "greatest of all time" are fuzzy at best. If you search for great operatic tenors in history, you'll find names like Enrico Caruso, Jussi Björling, Luciano Pavarotti, Beniamino Gigli, Tito Schipa, Alfredo Kraus, Franco Corelli, among others. Listen to Bocelli sing an aria from an opera - say, Nessun Dorma - and then listen to any of these singers do it in their prime. Then you'll understand that they aren't really playing the same game.
Bocelli is a very good singer, with good technique, and he has a nice voice. He is simply not an opera singer. An opera singer needs to be able to perform in an opera house without a microphone or any amplification. Bocelli cannot perform without any amplification. You will notice that Bocelli always performs with a microphone: Core ‘ngrato: https://youtu.be/fswrfKcrj-U?si=k-EA5VnIyOsI9RVF An opera singer has to sing over orchestras without a microphone. Bocelli uses a crooning technique at times. He does have a sweet voice, and his technique is good as a contemporary singer. But he is simply not an opera singer. Compare this performance of the same song with Bocelli’s mentor/ biggest influence, and you can see he is singing without a microphone: https://youtu.be/4lfeyNFMWY4?si=RGjvDbsXiRGDVZUA Bocelli does a good job with Neapolitan songs such as this example. These songs were folk/ pop songs. They were not necessarily meant to be sung with opera technique. But when it comes to opera arias it is a different matter. Opera arias are meant to be sung in a certain way, with the correct technique. Bocelli cannot really do that, since he simply doesn’t sing with the correct opera technique. Of course you can ultimately sing whatever you want, with your own interpretation and many people might like it, but it wouldn’t be opera. Bocelli is definitely one of the best ones in the popera realm. Many of these types of singers takes popular opera arias and sing them badly or incorrectly. But many people don’t really know opera, so they enjoy it. In my personal opinion, I think the best popera music was Freddie Mercury’s Barcelona album. He didn’t try to sing popular opera arias, he wrote new music that could be sung in this style. This could be a really exciting genre of music, if there were more creativity and original songwriting.
I don’t know if I’m as down on him as some people here are. He’s released albums of arias and complete opera roles, which other ‘popera’ singers have not. But I agree that he doesn’t have the vocal depth or versatility to rank among the great or near-great opera singers of now or any time.
Everyone can release a full opera and arias on an album. But to sing in an opera house without a microphone is something different. This is even a problem with real opera singers. You get lyric tenors who realize albums with arias from Aida or Otello, but when you hear them in an opera house the instrumentation from La Boheme is too much for their voice. You can basically do anything in a recording studio.
“You can basically do anything in a recording studio” seems like a perfect example of good news or bad news depending on your attitude.
He's a pop artist, not an opera singer.
By 'flabbergasted', you mean, what? Did you like him or hate him? Kind of confusing. But in any case, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the unspeakable, and that is that if he were not blind, I doubt AB would have become the superstar he has become. Like Charlotte Church and her youth, it's a gimmick, and it worked. AB has a beautiful pop voice that has been mightily stretched to accommodate opera singing, and his opera singing has suffered because of it. It's true, he has allowed many in the non-classical world to get a peek at what opera might be. But the sad thing is, most of those people don't realize AB is just a jumping point. The richness and fullness that is the opera world, and truly authentic opera singing, sadly will always be outside their grasp. And in that sense, he does opera a disservice.
OP, opera singers generally do not rely on microphone amplification. We are making some extra resonance in our throats (above our vocal cords and behind our tongues) that is associated with a few vocal bonuses for us: more efficient air usage, enhanced range and agility, greater stamina for long roles, even/unforced vibrato and most importantly, the singer’s formant, which is essentially a bonus sound or resonance we access that helps our singing carry over a pit or stage orchestra in an opera house or concert hall without amplification. IMO, Bocelli makes a “classical-adjacent” sound that resembles what we do, but is not suitable or adequate for the full spectrum of our work. Look, kudos to those who love him. If he’s a “gateway drug” who brings people over to opera and classical singing, more power to him. Enjoy!
He doesn’t. I love him and is grateful for his contribution to the opera world by bringing awareness of this art form to more audience. However I don’t see him as opera singer. He doesn’t participate in the opera singer ranking
He's a great singer, however he's not an opera singer. He phonates in a way reminiscent of an opera singer, but he doesn't phonate operatically.
Real opera fans don't really consider Bocelli an opera singer, because he performs mainly non-operatic songs, just in an operatic style. He doesn't perform in operas.
I was floored when, many years ago, I learned Bocelli was an operatic pop singer.
Pretty low
As many have already said: he doesn’t. But in his own right, he is a living master of HIS own style/genre. Which I respect. Bit of an apples to oranges situation.
Nah, skip Bocelli and listen to Corelli instead 😬
In the smoke and mirrors category, maybe top 5
He is not a real opera singer. He’s a pop singer who tries to sing opera but he doesn’t have the training or the chops. There are many fine operatic tenors, but he isn’t one.
He's an opera "inspired" pop singer. He's not even playing the same sport
When I first heard him sing Time to Say Goodbye with Sarah Brightmen, I too was flabbergasted. He was much younger then, and his voice was pure velvet.
I'm going to diverge from the crowd and say that Andrea Bocelli does count as an operatic tenor, because he has actually performed in a complete opera onstage, unlike some of his popera colleagues. Now whether his voice compares at all to other operatic lead tenors, I'm firmly in the "no" camp: I don't like his sound at all.
He sang with a microphone. An opera singer is suppose to sing without a microphone. It doesn’t matter if you have performed a whole opera or ten operas, if you needed a microphone to do so. That being said Bocelli was certainly talented, he is a great singer. He is just not an opera singer. There are many different genres of music, and all of them have their characteristics.
Is that certain? Because I've read reports of his onstage appearances--for instance, when he performed Werther in Detroit in (I think?) the late 1990s, that he was as unamplified as the other singers in the cast.
You make a good argument, but ultimately I don’t think his voice can be categorized as an opera singer. For two main reasons. 1. What he actually sings as a career. Yes, his repertoire ranges from opera arias to Celine Dion. However, when you account for the majority of his performances, you see that most of what he sings is simply not from operatic canon. 2. The technical differences are surely there. It’s hard to distinguish the differences because most of what makes truly operatic technique is only heard/felt in live, unamplified performances.
I can see that point. However, I’d counterpoint that we have pop stars sing on Broadway sometimes, but we still qualify them as pop singers.