They’re, Like, Awesome Opera Singers
No, not those Three Tenors. These were mere boys, baby-faced Italian teenagers calling themselves Il Volo and belting the red-sauce favorite “O Sole Mio” in front of projections of stained-glass windows. Channeling an unlikely mixture of Andrea Bocelli and the Jonas Brothers, the appearance capped a few months that brought them from “American Idol” to the morning talk shows to the final episode of “Entourage,” a circuit carefully designed to expose them to both mothers and daughters, PBS and MTV demographics, before their first North American tour, which arrives at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan on Monday.
In the NBC studio at Rockefeller Center, as the sleepy-eyed Gianluca Ginoble, 16, crooned the opening verse, and Piero Barone, 18, and Ignazio Boschetto, who turns 17 on Tuesday, released ringing high notes, Hoda Kotb, a “Today” co-host, put her hand on her heart and smiled wistfully behind the cameras.
“We are Il Volo,” Ignazio said at the end with a heavy accent and a dimpled grin. “It means ‘flight.’ Thank you for flying with us.”
After the taping Ms. Kotb towered over the boys in spiked heels. “Believe me, everyone’s going to come running,” she said. “They’re going to beat down the door.”
Arias for teenagers? That’s the theory, the crossover dream being masterminded by some of the most savvy executives in the music business: Jimmy Iovine, who helped turn Eminem and Lady Gaga into superstars; Ron Fair, who nurtured the careers of Christina Aguilera and the Black Eyed Peas; and Steve Leber, a management legend who worked with the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and AC/DC and has come out of pop retirement to try to make Il Volo explode.
The group inhabits the intersection of the Italian pop standard and the soaring power ballad, the same sweet spot that has carried performers like Mr. Bocelli and Il Divo to superstardom. The difference, of course, is age: theirs, and that of their potential audience. The success of a show like “Glee” has introduced the tantalizing possibility that genres like musical theater or, say, pop-opera can inspire screaming girls willing to buy concert tickets and T-shirts, as long as the interpreters are young and adorable.
“In the beginning all of us thought that because of their kind of music, the audience would be from 35 up,” said Tony Renis, the producer who discovered Il Volo, in a telephone interview from his home in Rome. “But now we realize that they can conquer the kids. The younger generation all over the world, they’re used to rap. They never had the chance to listen to this kind of music. But now Il Volo is spreading a new kind of feeling. They are conquering every age.”
The group caught Mr. Renis’s eye in the spring of 2009, when the three boys, none of whom had formal training, were competing individually on “Ti Lascio una Canzone,” an Italian version of “American Idol.” In a more-is-more epiphany a shrewd producer on the show suggested they combine forces, and their full-throated renditions of modern classics were hits.
“These kids were singing ‘O Sole Mio,’ and I heard such amazing, beautiful voices that I didn’t believe it,” Mr. Renis said. “I thought it was fake. They were singing with such mature voices, like men of 50 or 60 years.”
Mr. Renis played the clip for Mr. Iovine and Mr. Fair, who signed the group to Geffen Records. Its debut album, “Il Volo,” a mélange of songs in Italian, English and Spanish calibrated for the widest possible appeal, was assembled over the next year and released in Italy in November.
The label’s connections with “American Idol” landed the singers a coveted spot on that show in May. Last month they had a cameo on the final episode of “Entourage,” in which their song “Un Amore Così Grande,” blasting through a Los Angeles talent agency, persuaded Ari Gold to quit his job and escape to Italy. Ari’s teenage daughter sums up the group as well as anyone: “They’re, like, opera singers, and they’re amazing.”
The “Today” stop was only the latest of the singers’ talk-show appearances. They were on “The Tonight Show,” “Good Morning America,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and CBS’s “Early Show” in May, when their album was released in the United States, pegged to the “Idol” appearance. (Mr. Leber said they were discussing other possibilities with MTV and Nickelodeon, while a PBS special scheduled for March will continue to cultivate an older audience.)
The album made its debut on the Billboard 100 chart at No. 10, with sales that were respectable but hardly earth shattering. The Italian and American management teams butted heads about where, when and how to spend the boys’ time. Should they stay in America a full year and play smallish clubs? Make one-off appearances all over the world? Play theaters seating 1,000 or 3,000?
So on the road they were. Each of the boys was accompanied by one parent, a substantial sacrifice, since all three left their jobs to join their sons, and none are wealthy: Piero’s father is an auto-body mechanic, Gianluca’s a truck driver, and Ignazio’s mother owns a pizzeria that her 25-year-old daughter is running in her absence. None of the three speak English.
Piero hummed the “Brindisi” from Verdi’s “Traviata” as the group’s van sped up the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive toward the Dolce & Gabbana boutique on Madison Avenue to shop for a tour wardrobe. (Il Volo shares a publicist with Madonna, whose connection to the fashion label runs deep.) On his iPad he scrolled through photos of places the group had already been: Singapore, New Zealand, Sydney, Miami, jumping on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival. When they arrived at the store, Barbara Vitali, one of the singers’ Italian managers and a big-sister figure to the boys, told the sales associate, “We have to balance the repertory they are performing with the teenagers that they are.”
A series of slim blazers failed to fit Ignazio, who has lost more than 30 pounds but remains wide in the shoulders. The outgoing comedian to Gianluca’s quiet heartthrob and Piero’s earnest leader, Ignazio sang “All Nylon” to the tune of “All Night Long.” Gianluca emerged from the dressing room in tight black velvet pants and a shiny black blazer. Piero ended up with boots spattered Pollock style.
“They’re very, very different from one another,” Mr. Fair said. “Gianluca’s like a young Tony Curtis or a Mario Lanza, almost a Presley character, handsome and dark and Italian with fabulous hair. And Ignazio, he’s the big guy, a crowd pleaser and a people person, adorable and funny. Piero is more studious, very serious.”
Three hours and well into five figures’ worth of clothing later, the group headed to the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, site of the tour’s first performance and the trio’s first full concert ever. The singers had allotted two days for preparation.
The following morning’s rehearsal began well. The boys sounded fresh as they warmed up; the echo of one of Ignazio’s high notes stayed in the ice-cold air of the theater for five full seconds. But Gianluca missed an entrance — he had, as usual, been on his cellphone with his girlfriend — and things quickly dissolved into backstage shouting.
The next day was the opening show, and the boys had still not run a single song all the way through. Mr. Leber arrived, doling out hugs. “This is not music,” he said. “This is a happening. This is an event.”
And it was. It got off to a rough start. The lighting careened from darkness to glare. The sound mix, including the vocal track augmenting some of the group’s harmonies, was murky; the video projections — a mixture of slow-motion Italian film clips and animations — were distracting. The boys seemed unsure of exactly where to stand and how to move.
Then they opened their mouths. The first song was “Il Mondo,” a sweeping heart tugger. Like many of the numbers in Il Volo’s playbook, it started quietly, with a dusky verse from Gianluca. It built and built, until Ignazio, oozing delight at being onstage, let loose a startlingly full and mature high note.
A girl literally screamed with delight.
Gianluca glanced at Piero with relief in his eyes. The audience gave standing ovation after standing ovation despite the awkward atmospherics and stilted banter.
A chaotic morning took the boys, but not their luggage, to their second stop, Toronto. In contrast to the Borgata show — which, like much of the tour, was organized by the American concert-promotion monolith Live Nation — the Toronto appearance was the work of a local promoter, Mimmo Pellegrino. It was at Roy Thomson Hall, where the Toronto Symphony Orchestra plays and which is about three times the size of the Borgata theater.
The Borgata show had, as Mr. Leber had predicted, the feel of an event: sold out, electric. In Toronto about a quarter of the seats remained empty. Some odd scenic elements had been added, like three enormous white masks that were revealed at the end to be swivel chairs. The audience response was warm, but it was hard for even the loudest of the recorded string arrangements to fill the big space. There were faint warning signs about the boys’ aggressive vocal style, which depends on belting brassy high notes. Ignazio, so free and easy at the Borgata show, sounded rougher and more tired in Toronto, and he avoided some high notes entirely.
The audience at both shows was mostly older, but there were the seeds of what could become a classic boy-band phenomenon: that girl screaming in the audience at the Borgata, high-pitched shrieks of “We love you!” in Toronto, a high school senior who asked Piero to be her date for homecoming. (He said yes.) And maybe, just maybe, they will inspire young people to try “real” opera, whose long-term prognosis remains worrisome. If Il Volo can persuade teenagers to notice and care about vocal production in a classical — or at least classic — style, who knows?
“By January we will have sold 1.5 million records around the world,” predicted Mr. Fair, who arrived at the theater in Toronto just as the boys were exiting the stage. “Everyone will know who Il Volo is. It’s going to be a gigantic live act. Tickets are going to sell like crazy. And then a song will come along, like a Coldplay-type song, a pop record that’s introspective and beautiful, and everyone on the more pop end of things will know them.”
But before everyone knows them, only some people do, a degree of fame as pleasant as it is temporary. There was some discussion after the Borgata show about whether the boys should exit through a back door. They decided instead to greet the public, and as they walked into the lobby, what can only be called a polite mob ensued, just the right size and just the right amount of enthusiasm. The boys thanked everyone graciously as they signed autographs and posed for photos.
Earlier in the day Ignazio was sound-checking onstage with the band as Steve Leber watched from the seats. As if on cue, Ignazio hit one of his shining high notes. Mr. Leber smiled. “Our game plan is working,” he said.
Source: New York Times
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