darylsoul Reviews

Concerto: One Night in Central Park (2011 Video)

Conventional, formulaic crossover. It never overwhelms middle ground.

[2/10 · 8 March 2013]

Although Andrea Bocelli still sound great in concert, those televised shows are NOW becoming somewhat boring. Not everyone approves of opera's crossover with pop, especially when we do get to hear not the best juxtapositions. After a career of nearly 20 years (he has turned 54 last September), Mr. Bocelli still has not worked out some of the technical kinks in his singing, which are both masked and revealed by the amplification he routinely employs. His voice quavers on sustained notes; his tone is often thin and shaky. And for all the innate expressivity of his voice, his singing is sometimes curiously bland. His rhythmic delivery can be all over the place. The album is a thoroughly conventional, formulaic offering from the Italian tenor, who sports the regulation white suit on the CD sleeve and dutifully delivers an easy listening mix of orchestrated operatic stuff and standards with the odd flourish of Italian and English. He divides his time between soft pop standards and poppified classical, both reaching the same slickly bombastic yet never overwhelming middle ground. No new converts will be made but no fans will be alienated either. While Bocelli ticks all the predictable boxes, there are also a number of usual suspects. His guests - Celine Dion, Tony Bennett and Davis Foster - are boring to death: they are over-exposed and people starting asking WHY they are everywhere. Skip this one and go for something more inspiring and less boring.