BocelliOnline

[Melodie]

From the Providence Journal:

Besotted by Bocelli
Why fans adore Italy's operatic pop star

by Channing Gray

Vic Fusco is a straight arrow, a 54-year-old who runs the family oil-delivery business in the Hartford suburbs. But he confesses to one all-consuming, costly vice.

Fusco has just dropped $1,000 to hear Italian singing sensation Andrea Bocelli Sunday at the Dunkin' Donuts Center -- that's a $500 ticket for him and another for a woman whom he had not met, but who runs a Bocelli Web site.

Actually, top-priced tickets are a mere $275. But for an extra $225, Fusco and the Web site proprietor, Melodie Collins, get to attend a "meet-and-greet" session after the show. To sit in the front row and meet the singer, the price tag is $1,000 per seat.

"I'm a little nutty," said Fusco, who'd been out working the garage at Fusco Bros. in Windsor, Conn., when reached on the phone. Sunday's concert at The Dunk will be Fusco's fourth time hearing Bocelli in the flesh.

"If he weren't going to be local [meaning Providence], I'd go anywhere to hear him,'' he said.

Fusco is not alone. Bocelli, the sensational Italian crossover artist who emerged from obscurity about a decade ago to become one of the world's top-grossing entertainers, has a following like no other entertainer. Not since Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles have fans been so gaga over a singer.

The faithful fly the world over to hear his mellifluous tenor. In Providence, devotees are expected to trek in from Delaware, Michigan and New Jersey, said Ann-Marie Conklin, a nurse from Pawtucket who admits to being "afflicted."

When Bocelli sang last year at Boston's FleetCenter, said Conklin, someone flew in from England. Groupies write love poems online to the 45-year-old singer, and make pilgrimages to the family cantina in Tuscany to buy Bocelli chianti.

Conklin has booked a room at the Holiday Inn, just around the bend from The Dunk, so she can spend the night schmoozing with fellow Bocelli lovers.

"It's sort of like a pajama party," said Conklin, whose bedroom is plastered with pictures of the handsome singer.

"I'm kind of hooked."

Conklin, who is about to partake of her eighth live Bocelli event, keeps scrapbooks of Bocelli reviews and articles. And there's a bottle of Bocelli wine from the family vineyard on display in her home. A friend gave her two bottles; she drank the other.

Conklin, who describes herself as a 59-year-old groupie, said she's "nuts for the man," but not as bad as those "who fly across the pond" to hear him.

She recalls the first time she heard that golden voice. It was sort of the way people remember what they were doing when misfortune befalls them, or they win the lottery.

She was listening to a Sunday morning TV show from another room. Bocelli was singing for the pope.

"I heard this voice and came running into the room."

The Bocelli craze

That Bocelli's handlers picked the Renaissance city for the last stop on his brief seven-city tour of the United States does seem a coup, even though he has sung in several nearby venues -- in Hartford, Worcester, Boston and the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Conn.

If Sunday's show is typical, The Dunk will be mobbed, pasta sales should spike and local hostelries should rent more than a few rooms.

Why all the fuss?

The Bocelli craze seems to have all the right ingredients. Not only is the divorced father to two sons blessed with a naturally beautiful voice, he straddles all musical styles, from "My Way" to Puccini's "Nessun dorma." He also seems to appeal to folks of all ages, all walks of life and all musical tastes.

Women love his angelic visage, but guys enjoy him too, as witnessed by Fusco, who's also a big Stones and Springsteen fan.

"You see a lot of men at his shows," said Fusco. "Not alone, but, you know, they don't look like they were dragged there."

Most of the fans we spoke with were not big classical music lovers, and most had never been to an opera.

"Musically," said Conklin, who collects Beanie Babies and flamingos, "I'm between Lite 105 and B101." Growing up, her idols were Fabian, Rick Nelson and The Big Bopper.

When she hears Bocelli, she said, "it's as though he's singing to me.

"When he sings, it feels just like floating. His voice is very soothing and relaxing."

She was disappointed, though, when she shelled out extra money for a post-concert reception at the Worcester Centrum.

"He said about five sentences," she recalled.

"He's just a tenor"


As a singer of opera, Bocelli has taken his knocks. Critics have faulted his voice as too small and said he's not conversant with operatic style.

Vic Fusco brushes those barbs aside, saying Bocelli has never made himself out to be an opera star.

"He never passes himself off as anything more than he is. He's just a tenor.

"Personally, I think other opera singers are jealous."

Bocelli, who was born with glaucoma but totally blinded in a soccer mishap at the age of 12, got his start playing in piano bars. He earned a law degree in Pisa, but found himself thrust into the limelight as a vocalist in 1992, when Italian pop star Zucchero discovered him during an audition for one of his recordings.

Vic Fusco recalls hearing Bocelli for the first time on a Bridgeport radio station in 1994. He made an "instant connection," said Fusco, who was a Three Tenors fan at the time.

When Fusco saw Bocelli on public television a couple of years later, he was surprised to find that Bocelli was not "just another fat, bald Italian tenor." Fusco was struck by the singer's good looks and by the fact that he was blind -- something that also struck Conklin the first time she saw him.

"His stage presence is different from anyone else," said Fusco. "If I go to see Pavarotti or The Three Tenors it's almost like there is a kind of narcissism, that they are the greatest guys in the world."

Bocelli appears humble, said Fusco.

"Seeing him in person, he puts on a show like nobody else. I've been to big sporting events, to several World Series, and he surpasses all that."

Fusco, who once saw Bocelli twice in one weekend, said the crooner invests such effort and builds to such emotional heights during a show that the audience can't help but leave on a high.

When leaving Bocelli's concert at the FleetCenter last year, he said, he encountered a woman outside on the steps, staring blankly into space.

"It just keeps getting better and better," Fusco told her.

"You ain't kidding," said the woman.

She's a believer

Fans tell remarkable stories about the effect of Bocelli's dulcet tenor. Melodie Collins, who presides over www.bocellionline.com, said the Web site was started by a man named Michael Wagner after Wagner found that Bocelli recordings had a soothing effect on his sick wife.

Collins, who works for an insurance company outside Boston, hadn't paid much attention to Bocelli until she popped one of his CDs on during her morning walk.

Now she's a believer.

"It was the perfect music for the perfect time," said Collins, who volunteers her time to maintain a Web site that gets between 1,500 and 2,000 hits a day. She said she knows of people with shrine-like rooms filled with pictures and mementos of the tenor.

The title of one jotting on the Web page: "If loving him is wrong, I don't want to be right."

Most Bocelli fans, said Collins, are "wonderful people from all walks of life."

It was Collins who tipped Fusco off to the post-show reception in Providence, an event sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation.

"Have you ever met Bocelli," Fusco asked in an e-mail. "No," said Collins.

"Well there's always a first time," he wrote back, offering to buy her a ticket.

"I don't like to go to concerts alone," said Fusco.

Bocelli fans don't talk much about the cost of tickets, though.

Lisa Napolitano, who just started doing marketing for the Fleet Skating Center in downtown Providence, bought three mid-priced seats for Sunday's concert, one for her and two for her folks. Her father is a big-time opera lover.

Cost?

"I can't remember," said the 26-year-old from Cranston. "I just put it on the credit card.

"I knew if I didn't buy them tickets, they wouldn't go. They don't go out very much."

Napolitano has unusually wide-ranging tastes for a woman in her 20s -- from Def Leppard to Rosemary Clooney.

"He brings out the best in people," said Collins, "whether they have a crush on him or not.

"He brings out their positive qualities and makes them feel good. That's what everyone is looking for."

Andrea Bocelli sings at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Dunkin' Donuts Center, 1 La Salle Square, Providence. 331-2211 or www.ticketmaster.com. Tickets are $47.50 to $276.50; the $47.50 tickets are for 500 "side-view" seats to the left and right of the stage, and go on sale at 10 a.m. today.

There also are front-row seats, and a ticket to the post-show reception, for $1,000 through the National Italian-American Foundation (the $500 VIP seats are sold out). A portion of the proceeds benefits the group's Andrea Bocelli Scholarship Fund. Contact Kristina Pappalardo at (202) 939-3109 or [email protected]. For more information, go to www.niaf.org.

Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline is hosting a $100 reception with Bocelli immediately after the show to benefit public-school music programs. The price does not include a ticket to the show. Call 421-2489, ext. 733.


CAPTION: Melodie Collins of Dedham, Mass., Conklin, and Vic Fusco of Windsor, Conn., look over Conklin's scrapbook.

http://www.projo.com/music/content/projo_20031120_fans.18d6a7.html

[NOTE: Vic and Ann-Marie are both members of BocelliOnline :wink: )

[Kenzu]

Outstanding article :D In it comes every aspect being Bocelli fan and most delightful was also our Melodie mentioned she´s doing such a great job with this site "worlds best Bocelli fan site".
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"Ex nihilo nihil fit"

[Tina]

Wonderful Melodie! I cant wait to see the pics in the paper! 8)
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La tua voce e come un dolce dolores nel mio cuore! Non c'e nessuno migliore di te!!

[BoFanBecky]

Fantastic Melodie! I loved reading this article; it was just downright FUN!! Have to confess that I've been holding my breath since you mentioned about it couple weeks back......I still recall all too vividly another newspaper "smear job" of Bocelli fans and was worried this one might take the same "angle". No need to worry, Channing Gray did an excellent job.

I'm gonna print this out to put in my scrapbook, as I'm sure you & Ann Marie will do :wink: Sounds like you & Vic are in for a big treat come Sunday. Keeping my fingers crossed that you will get a few words in with OFT!

[Melodie]

Well, Becky, a few words with OFT was the hope and prayer, of course...but did you notice the mention of the post-concert reception with the Mayor? Our poor Mr. Bocelli is apparently supposed to be ushered into the NIAF reception and then over to the Mayor's reception : ...and all of this AFTER he's given us the performance of his life!! :wink:


CORRECTIONS: Mr. Gray made the following errors in his report: "the Web site proprietor, Melodie Collins...who volunteers her time to maintain a Web site that gets between 1,500 and 2,000 hits a day..."

While it's true that BOL receives an average of 1,500 to 2,000 hits a day, I am NOT the proprietor of BocelliOnline, and I do NOT maintain the site...as we all know, Michael is the owner/operator of this website; if it were left up to me to keep this place running, I'm afraid none of us would be here right now. :roll:

[Emily]

CONGRATS Melodie!!!! To all our people!! :D :D


Ciao!
Emily
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"It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer."

-Ludwig van Beethoven, "Immortal Beloved"

[ahma]

Melodie ............. Great article !!!!! I can't wait to hear how wonderful your night will be ...... you will have one of the most special evenings of your life ~ as Olivia & I did ............ ENJOY & soak up every single moment ... it is something you will never forget ........... I am so happy for you ...
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Some people come into our lives & quickly go..... Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts & we are never the same.....

[Pamela]

[KathyinCt]

Just a great article. Happy to read about the folks from Bocellionline. In my opinion this website and others(though this is my favorite) have done such a great job in promoting AB. Much more than people or organization who are paid to to such things, because it's done out of admiration and love for the man and his talents.
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Where there's life, there's hope

[Bocellifan4ever]

Thank you so much Melodie for posting this wonderful Article for all to read. I've enjoyed reading everything,& the picture is outstanding of all 3 of you.
Great job done.
Bol.com is so wonderful,& has every respect for everyone,& the site dedicated to Bocelli is just grand. He is a magnificent man.
Thanks to you to Michael for giving us Bol.com. If it wasn't for this site,we would never know Andrea as well as we do,& wouldn't have all our wonderful friends and fan's of Andrea.

Thanks again,Melodie,& Michael.

Hug's to you both.
Friend, Claire.
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Claire B Berlendy