Il Volo struggles in effort to bring opera to the masses struggles, audience, evening, trouble, effort

Quest

http://www.vancouversun.com/ente ... /8832123/story.html


Volo
With Nikki Yanofsky
Orpheum Theatre | Sunday, Aug. 25
Opera is in trouble. The ancient art form seems to be losing its audience. Can a boy band like Il Volo be the force that brings it back to life? If their performance Sunday evening at the Orpheum is any indication, probably not.
The trio of Italian tenors - Ignazio Boschetto, Piero Barone and Gianluca Ginoble - are all barely out of their teens. They're cute, charming and share management with pop greats like Madonna. They even have personas - Boschetto is the clown, Barone is the serious one and Ginoble, who looks and dresses like a young Tony Curtis, is the heartthrob.
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They last appeared in Vancouver on tour with vocal legend Barbra Streisand at Rogers Arena, where they performed for an audience that numbered in the tens of thousands. The much smaller Orpheum offered the trio an opportunity to connect with the audience on a much more intimate level.
So why wasn't that youth onstage reflected in the audience at the Orpheum Sunday night?
Montreal jazz phenom Nikki Yanofsky warmed the crowd up with a mix of her own songs and the standards that put her in the public eye when she was just 13 years old. Her Etta James may have been intact but the audience was only barely registering it, refusing even to move their heads, let alone their hands, in time to the music.
The boys appeared a little ahead of their intended start time to applause and whistles. There were screams too, but they sounded a little more granny that tween.
They appeared on a purple lit stage to the opening of Questo Amore, an Italian translation of Diane Warren's I Don't Want to Miss a Thing, the theme song from Armageddon and the first song off their second album.
They're not lacking in ambition. Boschetto attacked Caruso, an ode to the famous Italian tenor written by Lucio Dalla and covered by many.
Barone is undoubtedly the most talented of the three. His solo got a standing ovation, and he tends to attack the soaring high parts with the most gusto. But even he must rely too heavily on the microphone, where a mature tenor would have no problem filling a room like the Orpheum with his pipes alone.
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Their stage banter tended to be awkward, vacillating between staged jokes and improvised hi jinx that didn't make much sense. Half way through the show, they called what seemed to be an impromptu five-minute intermission, to the surprise of the lighting crew and the audience.
They seemed a good deal more comfortable after the break, though sound problems plagued a cover of Sarah McLachlan's Angel, perhaps chosen to connect with Canadian audiences.
Ginoble did a soulful tribute to Frank Sinatra with Cole Porter's Night and Day.
As a tribute to their time with Streisand, Boschetto sang a soaring rendition of her trademark torch song, Memory.
For Maria, the classic love song from Westside Story, the boys tracked down three well-dressed girls in the audience and serenaded them on white couches brought out for the occasion. The look of love in the girls' eyes showed that Il Volo had won at least a few young hearts this night.
Though they attract a certain amount of enthusiasm, the problem at the heart of Il Volo as opera singers is that their voices lack the depth and gravity of years of serious study. As pop singers, they are painfully wooden and their song book lacks verve. If their goal is to attract a new generation to operatic singing, they might try covering songs that appeal to that new generation rather radio hits from decades before their target audience was born.

Quest

I watched them on KCTS9 tonite,

I may sound like a snob on this but what a joke!

I instantly lost respect towards Placido Domingo, and am now referring him as "da old fool"...

Q.

Quest

Il Volo and Plácido Domingo in Florence: a tribute to The Three Tenors

http://www.ilvolo.mus.br/2016/05/il-volo-and-placido-domingo-in-florence-a-tribute-to-the-three-tenors/

We are glad to offer you the translation into English of the article published by La Nazione – the newspaper of Florence – about the event that will take place on July 1st, 2016 in Florence:
Il Volo and Plácido Domingo – a tribute to The Three Tenors.

Siamo felici di offrirvi la traduzione in inglese dell’articolo pubblicato da La Nazione, quotidiano di Firenze, riguardante l’evento che si svolgerà l’1 luglio 2016 a Firenze:
Il Volo e Plácido Domingo – un tribute ai Tre Tenori.





IL NUOVO VOLO DEI TRE TENORI – CON DOMINGO RINASCE LA LEGGENDA
by Andrea Spinelli (May 11th, 2016 in Italian)
Translated into English by Francy.B and Martina

THE NEW VOLO (FLIGHT) OF THE THREE TENORS
WITH DOMINGO THE LEGEND IS REBORN

Florence, a tribute to the legendary concert of 26 years ago in Caracalla

Gianluca Ginoble: “ We perform with Plácido:
it’s like singing with Paul McCartney for One Direction”

July 7th, 1990 was Saturday. At the San Nicola stadium in Bari the Italian soccer team was defeating England and staking a claim on a bronze medal at the Football World Cup, while at the Terme di Caracalla Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras were leaving aside true or supposed competition of a lifetime as gods of High C to transform themselves into the most impressive “firm” of Opera ever seen. Or listened to. The miracle of the one in three concert – and most of all of dough, as gossips remarked – without thinking about the impact of an event that would have legitimized opera in the stadiums; with all the reserve judgments but also the enormous educational effect that such a business operation carries within. Also given the fact that the idea of a mega event – organized by the Italian manager and producer Mario Dradi – to solemnize the soccer triumphs turned out to be spot-on. Then, it was the Hungarian producer Tibor Rudas, a great friend of Big Luciano, to transform it into an industry.

THE EVENT ON JULY 1ST “The show at Piazza Santa Croce
will be recorded by PBS, that will air it in the USA”

25 years later (or better, almost 26) Il Volo is back to celebrate that “magical night” with a great show n July 1st at Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. Presale starts today. Going back to Caracalla – as the trio had put forth to the audience of Raiuno last December, in front of the cameras of “Panariello sotto l’albero” – is not possible, as music is not allowed in the archeological site of the original concert anymore (right now, it is admitted only in an adjacency). Il Volo will be accompanied by the great orchestra of the Teatro Massimo of Palermo, conducted by Ramon Tebar. On stage the Legend, too: i.e. Plácido Domingo itself, either in the shoes of singer or orchestra conductor. Il Volo itself talks about this, soon after coming back from Brazil and almost ready to leave and conquer Europe.

At the time of The Three Tenor in Caracalla you were not even a blink in the eyes of your dads.
Piero Barone: Indeed, but even if we were not yet born, we grew up listening to the album recorded on that unique and unrepeatable night. Clearly beautiful songs, that thrill you until the last note.
Gianluca Ginoble: Thanks to that album, I started to look at opera from another perspective. Before The Three Tenors, only Mario Lanza had done that kind of crossover. Then, Bocelli and all the other were born.

You persist repeating that your project is ambitious, but “not pretentious”.
Ignazio Boschetto: Those who will consider our tribute as an imitation of The Three Tenors are off the track. We only want to try to make people live the emotion of that night again. Also, 85% of our repertoire is the same of Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras concerts. We are only missing “Nessun dorma” and a couple arias.
Piero Barone: With this show we intend to create a “collection” of The Three Tenors repertoire.

Will you document this show in Florence?
Barone: Yes, it will be entirely recorded by PBS, that will broadcast it in the USA.

The concert in Caracalla was born with a charity purpose.
Ginoble: Ours will serve the good, too. From the night, a Christmas live album will be born, which revenues will partially be devoted either to the Fondazione Pavarotti or to Maestro Carreras’s one. The night will be opened right by a video message of the Catalan Tenor.

It is difficult not to think about a tour to follow.
Ginoble: In fact, we are thinking about going on with this experience in the arenas all around the world.
Barone: We will not “make mess” as always, as it is a tribute, but we will anyway bring our personalities on stage.

Will Domingo come?
Barone: He will join when it is possible. It is true that he is 75 and still sings every night, but we are in our twenties… and we do not claim to impose him our schedule.

THE ALBUM AND THE ARENAS
Part of the revenues of the live album will be devoted either to the Pavarotti
and Carreras Fondazione. Then a worldwide tour.


That Eurovision – that saw you as protagonists last year – is in progress in Stockholm.
Barone: We have retweeted our wishes to Francesca Michielin. We cheer for her, as we do really know the anxiety you feel in representing Italy. Eurovision gives us hope that another way to stay in front of the TV and feel a united country other than Italian soccer team matches exists.
Ginoble: Good luck Francesca, even if Eurovision songs will meet the attention they deserve when even on that stage we will start to be worried a little bit less about the show and a little bit more about music.

Three postcards from this world tour of yours.
Ginoble: I love Argentina, so I would send it from Buenos Aires.
Boschetto: Me, from San Paolo in Brazil.
Barone: Me from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. We had been there with Barbra Streisand and going back on our own was an incredible emotion.

So, are you ready for this new adventure?
Ginoble: Yes. For us, going on stage with Doming is like singing with Paul McCartney for One Direction.



Plácido Domingo
I Love these guys, it will be a magical night
A tribute full of style and deep feelings
I am really happy to accompany Piero, Ignazio and Gianluca, conducting them in this magical night under the starry sky of an awesome city: Florence! I really love these guys, who are spreading around the world everlasting hits that I often include in my concerts as well. I admire these guys’ style and I look at their ascending careers. In this concert, they will also perform some opera romanza. I get moved in thinking that it will be a tribute to Luciano, José and me, remembering The Three Tenors.

José Carreras
Such emotion. And so much nostalgia.
These memories arouse emotion and nostalgia in me. It was an extraordinary concert, that maybe has changed a little bit the perception of the enthusiasts. And the non enthusiasts maybe started to learn about this music through these concerts.