Andrea Bocelli, 58, the golden-voiced Italian tenor who overcame blindness and other hardships to become one of the world’s foremost singers, was the source of inspiration for a movie by one of Britain’s leading film directors, Michael Radford.
All Bocelli asked was that his blindness not be portrayed as a disability.
Having struggled with blindness, poverty and making ends meet as a bar singer, Andrea Bocelli eventually went on to perform to sold-out audiences world-wide, singing to presidents and popes alike, selling 80 million albums along the way, and being awarded a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.
Bocelli went blind as a child, struggled to teach himself to read music in Braille, and competed in talent shows until his potential was ultimately recognised by Luciano Pavarotti, who declared that “there is no finer voice than Bocelli.” It is no wonder that his life was such an inspiration.
Michael Radford, some of whose previous films have included the critically acclaimed Il Postino — for which he received an Oscar nomination — and The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino, is shooting the Music of Silence.
Bocelli is portrayed in the film by British actor Toby Sebastian, known for Game of Thrones, who speaks with an Italian accent and mimes to tracks of Bocelli’s voice that are synchronized in a complex technical process.
Radford recounted to the Observer that Bocelli asked that Sebastian not attempt to portray a blind person “because I spend most of my life trying to pretend that I can actually see.”
Though Radford initially had misgivings about making a film about a living person, he said he found Bocelli’s story so inspiring that he went ahead with the project. “He [Bocelli] was born with glaucoma in one eye. He was in hospital most of his early childhood until they managed to save about 10% of the sight in one eye. He was categorized as blind, but with a limited amount of sight,” he said. “Then, when he was 12, he was playing football in his blind school and somebody kicked a ball that hit his other eye and blinded him.”
Once he started working on the script with Bocelli, Radford got to know him and began to understand exactly why the singer “doesn’t consider himself to be handicapped in any way.” Radford explained: “This is about a guy who’s determined – he’s a forceful character. He’s also physically extremely courageous. He rides horses and does all sorts of things that you wouldn’t imagine that someone who is blind would do with the degree of skill that he achieves.
Bocelli has just released a special 20th anniversary edition of his hit album, Romanza, which includes two new versions of the song that catapulted him to stardom, Time To Say Goodbye (Con Te Partirò), one of the biggest-selling singles of all time. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. Now he has made new recordings to be used in The Music of Silence, in which he also has a cameo role in the film.
Radford said: “The scene kicks off with him sitting at a typewriter, writing the story of the film, and he’s in the theatre … at the end, he goes through the theatre … and then steps out in front of a huge audience and starts to sing.”
Speaking to the Observer on the set at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, where the shoot will continue throughout this month, Radford said that though Bocelli might not be able to see the final movie, he would certainly be able to “feel it, sense it and hear it”.
Source: The Guardian
