Andrea Bocelli - Incanto (2008/2018) [Hi-Res]

Andrea Bocelli's studio album "Incanto" is a collection of the most famous Italian songs - including Mamma, Funiculi Funicula and Santa Lucia. They are the songs which have enchanted Andrea since childhood. Released to coincide with his 50th birthday, the album is a personal tribute to his musical heritage. Popularised through concert, radio and record and the film industry by the great tenors of the 19th and 20th centuries, this selection of songs is a celebration of the Italian tenor tradition. Thanks to the legendary voices of Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli, Franco Corelli, Mario Lanza and Luciano Pavarotti, these songs have become a huge global export and fuelled the romance of generations to come. Incanto is also a homage to Love. It includes a group of songs which have told love stories in music for the past 170 years. The repertoire is a tribute to the many faces and places of love: love for a mother (Mamma); love for a woman (O surdato 'nammurato, Era di maggio, Un amore cosi grande, Non ti scordar di me ); love for a place (the pier in Santa Lucia, Mount Vesuvio in Funiculi Funicula ); love for a city (Napoli, Granada) and love for a country (Italy). Love for Italy, and a particular affection for Naples are prevalent themes throughout Incanto. Andrea has chosen one contemporary Neapolitan song - the "tarantella" Pulcinella, which highlights his fond connection to Naples and the city's unique position in the past, present and future of Italian song.

"Although it's not likely to change many minds about Andrea Bocelli, this is one of the more intriguing items in the Italian crossover tenor's catalog. In a way it's surprising that he hasn't taken on this project until now, for the Neapolitan and Italian mid-century pop songs he performs here were in many ways the original "crossover" items from the European continent. On the other hand, the performers, like Caruso, who made these songs famous (or the earlier ones among them, at least), did so as opera singers who were offering an exaggerated, slightly camp version of their normal musical language. That's not what happens here. Incanto is billed as an evocation of Italy in the 1950s, as experienced through the romantic classics of cinema from Hollywood and from Italy itself. The arrangements are lush, pure mid-century pop with strings, much heavier than the ones you would hear with Caruso or even the contemporary operatic singers who have recorded discs like this, and conductor Steven Mercurio, leading the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, plays them to the hilt. And the thing with Bocelli himself is that his voice resides easily in the ranges and moves of these songs. He's not forcing his voice into operatic brilliance, but simply doing what comes naturally. The result is that the inherent humor in some of these songs, like Funiculì Funiculà, is diminished, but that those that rely on pure sentiment, like the Mexican chestnut Granada, are given a lightness and warmth that fits perfectly with what Bocelli is all about. After coming to international stardom, Bocelli attempted in various ways to tease new things out of his voice, which was probably beneficial in the end inasmuch as it kept the spotlight on his career: when he showed up in middle-sized cities around the world to sing opera, the press went with him. Here, he returns to his comfort zone -- paradoxically in music that wasn't always quite about a comfort zone, but the singer's fans who can pick his voice out from across a crowded shopping mall are going to love this." (James Manheim, AMG)

Andrea Bocelli, tenor
Veronica Berti, vocals
Anna Bonitatibus, mezzo
Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi
Steven Mercurio, conductor

Digitally remastered