HE’S sung for Pavarotti and the Pope.Now Andrea Bocelli will sing for his papa.On Thursday, in his only New York-area performance of the year, the Italian tenor will pay tribute to Alessandro Bocelli, who died in May.
Part of the proceeds – tickets go for up to $500 a pop – will go to fight pancreatic cancer, the disease that killed him.
And while the setting couldn’t be more all-American – Liberty State Park, with the skyline and Lady Liberty as its backdrop – the music is purely, passionately Italian.
The inspiration, however, began in Russia.
“This concert is an old idea, from when I recorded my first classical album in Moscow,” Bocelli told The Post.
“At the time, I was far from my house for such long periods, I felt like the Italian immigrants. So I thought to make a concert for these Italians – Neapolitan songs, some arias from opera; the songs they loved.”
Speaking by cell phone from London, where he was appearing on TV, the 41-year-old tenor sounded tired but intense. It has, after all, been a whirlwind life, with a leap to fame as romantic as his repertoire.
Born in Tuscany to a wealthy farming family, he was blinded at 12 in a soccer accident. And while he’d always loved to sing, music isn’t a career you can count on – not even in Italy.
So Bocelli went to law school, all the while moonlighting in piano bars. In one of them, he met Enrica Cenzatti, then a 17-year-old student, who fell in love with “his voice first, then him.”
They married in 1992, the year of his other big break: recording a song with Italy’s biggest pop star, Zucchero Fornaciari. The idea was that Luciano Pavarotti would accompany Fornaciari on the final recording.
But when the larger-than-life legend heard the recording, he reportedly cried, “You do not need me to sing it. Let Andrea, for there is no one finer.”
With a benediction like that, Bocelli’s career soared. Seemingly overnight, the ruggedly handsome singer went from piano bars to concert halls, performing with Kiri Te Kanawa, Bob Dylan, Sarah Brightman and the world’s major orchestras.
He’s also become the Harry Potter of the Billboard charts, holding down key spots on the classical, pop and world music charts and selling $30 million worth of recordings.
Not that his life has been one long sweet song. Last May, as he was rehearsing for a concert in Rome, word came that his father had died. Bocelli immediately canceled the performance and left for Tuscany to mourn.
Only when his mother begged him to sing – insisting that his father would have wanted it that way – did he manage to make the performance.
There have been other wounds, though Bocelli doesn’t like to speak of them. He refuses to discuss his blindness, which he calls “very boring … a problem I’ve forgotten.”
And then there was his U.S. opera debut last fall in Massenet’s “Werther,” with the Michigan Opera Theatre. The critics were underwhelmed.
“His sustained notes wobble,” snipped the New York Times. “His soft high notes are painfully weak.”
Bocelli dismisses such criticism.
“First of all,” he says, “I have the recording of this opera. I’m very satisfied. Very often, what the critics say is really not correct.”
Nevertheless, sources say, Bocelli is working with his vocal coach to improve his projection and stage presence, and is planning to perform again.
He’s also recording up a storm: Due this fall is his recording of Puccini’s “La Boheme” with Zubin Mehta and the Israeli Philharmonic and a recording of Verdi arias.
Not surprisingly, he doesn’t regret leaving the law.
“No, no, no,” he says. “Maybe I look at my books now and then, but no.”
Tickets for Bocelli’s concert Thursday with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra are $60 to $500 and are available through Ticketmaster, (212) 307-7171.
