Andrea Bocelli was permanently blinded after a hit on the football field! A special episode of the Art and Sport series

The artist was born in Lajatico, a town in Tuscany, on September 22, 1958, in a family of farmers. Before his birth, doctors advised his mother to have an abortion, as it was clear that she was going to give birth to a disabled child. And what a life he gave. The world would have been significantly poorer without Andrea Bocelli.

Andrea Bocelli's turning point: a ball in full orbit

Born with congenital glaucoma, Andrea never saw the world as an ordinary person. And Glory to Heaven that he didn't even understand it as one.

His vision was already affected by increased eye pressure and damage to the optic nerve when he suffered an accident – right on the football field: 12-year-old Andrea was a student at a boarding school for visually impaired children, and one of his passions was football.

And, because he was among those who were not completely blind, he was a goalkeeper: the light, the colors, the shapes – the ball!, could be distinguished.

Then came the blow. A ball, an impact, a hemorrhage. The blindness would have happened at some point anyway, for the disease had already begun its inexorable course, but the blow hastened it and symbolically marked his passage from one world to another.

If football offered him an illusion of normality and camaraderie, later music became his refuge and offered him introspection and depth.

The first connections blossomed from childhood: Bocelli sang, both vocally and instrumentally, in the church choir. He had been taking piano lessons since he was 6 years old, being “the only thing that consoled him”, according to his mother. Later, Bocelli detached the art of several instruments.

Andrea Bocelli, photo Gettyimages

Bocelli won a contest

Two years after the accident on the soccer field, Bocelli won a contest, performing “O sole mio.” Initially, Andrea Bocelli graduated from the Faculty of Law in Pisa and played the piano in bars to support his musical studies in parallel.

His life would change at the end of the century, when a demo reached the ears of a producer, and Bocelli signed his first recording contract. He had discovered his true instrument: his voice.

In 1992, Italian rock star Zucchero held auditions for tenors in order to record a demo tape of his song “Miserere”, which he wanted to send to Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti. After hearing Bocelli on the recording, Pavarotti urged Zucchero to use Bocelli instead.

The demo tape came from Caterina Caselli, who had discovered Bocelli.

Zucchero eventually convinced Pavarotti to record the piece with Bocelli, and the song became a hit across Europe.

On Zucchero's European tour in 1993, Bocelli accompanied him to sing the duet, but he also received solo moments in concerts, performing “Nessun dorma” from Turandot by Giacomo Puccini. Bocelli signed with the Milan-based label Sugar Music after the group's president heard him sing “Miserere” and “Nessun dorma” at Zucchero's birthday party.

In 1994, Bocelli made his operatic debut in Verdi's Macbeth, and at Christmas that year he was invited to perform before the Pope. In 1996, the song Con te partiro (and its later version, the duet with Sarah Brightman called Time to Say Goodbye) was heard in every corner of the world. He later released the album “Romanza”, which broke all records. Bocelli's career exploded and the artist never stopped.

Subsequent albums and commercial successes turned a classic tenor into a global phenomenon.

6Grammy nominations, 6 Latin Grammy nominations, a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination has Andrea Bocelli in his career

He opened two Champions League finals

The connection with football was never lost, even when Bocelli was already filling the biggest stages of the world. The artist officiated the opening moment of the 2009 Champions League final in Rome between Barcelona and Manchester United, performing the song “Il Gladiatore”, plus a vocal supplement to the anthem of the competition.

In fact, Bocelli also performed the anthem of the competition at the 2016 final between Atletico Madrid and Real, played at San Siro.

Furthermore, when Claudio Ranieri won the legendary title with Leicester in a Premier League era dominated by Manchester City and Liverpool, Andrea Bocelli also appeared at the King Power Stadium and performed Nessun Dorma and Time to Say Goodbye in front of over 30,000 fans in a moment of maximum emotion.

Andrea Bocelli made classical music accessible to the whole world, becoming a symbol of hope and elegance. The tenor embodies the idea that beauty can be created even in darkness.