Voices in harmony: A conversation with Italy’s Il Volo

Il Volo is: Ignacio Boschetto, left, Piero Baron and Gianluca Ginoble. Publicity photo. They’re not the Three Tenors, nor are they the Bee Gees. But the three young Italian vocal artists who comprise Il Volo have things in common with those famous harmony-singing trios. Piero Barone, Ignazio Boschetto and Gianluca Ginoble are, individually and collectively, masters of bel canto (“beautiful singing”), the powerful, but lyrical and graceful, style of operatic vocalizing (think Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, aka the fabled Three Tenors). Il Volo (it translates as “The Flight”) is known for operatic arias, popular songs and even Broadway numbers, performed as solos, and duets, and full three-part harmonies. Mostly in Italian. Like the Bee Gees, Il Volo has sold millions of records around the world (and the comparisons end squarely there). The trio – with orchestra – will perform Thursday (Nov. 12) at Benchmark International Arena in Tampa. Tickets for the 8 p.m. concert can be found here . The Catalyst spoke with all three singers simultaneously, via Zoom from Italy. They were each in different locations. Bear in mind that while music is the universal language, English is not their first. St. Pete Catalyst: It’s been 17 years for Il Volo. Is it still fresh for you to go out a nd do this, almost every day? Piero Barone: It looks like we start yesterday! Because what we’ve done, we made everything with a smile on our face, and enjoying every single moment we spend together. And we still enjoy it, since like the first time we go onstage. I think this is the most important thing for an artist, for a group, to enjoy every concert, every experience together. That it looks like the first time. There’s an expression in America: ‘That sounds very Pollyanna.’ Certainly, after 17 years the three of you, in a plane, in a car, in a dressing room, there must be some punchouts somewhere! Do you guys still get along beautifully? Or is this just a business arrangement? Ginoble Di Guanluca: It’s like a family. I didn’t choose my friends, my colleagues, my brothers, actually.  We don’t choose our parents, our friends. We are brothers and we are family. And if we have the same goal, why should we just fight? I think that smart people don’t fight. Because people who really love … we have to really learn to listen to the other – and don’t think that what we say must be the reason of everything, you know what I mean? So we learn how to listen to each other. Let’s go back to 2009, and even before that. Was the vocal blend there immediately? Ignacio Boschetto: We participated in a talent show in Italy, as single singers. Nobody was thinking about making a group and traveling around the world. But then, during that TV show, the producer put us together. And we started singing together. It was something very easy. It was not like ‘OK, now we are a group!’ We were just singing songs together. And then when we came out from the TV show, a manager of Andrea Boccelli, and a producer, decided to bring us to America. To U.S.A. And since then, our career started. You’re all three obviously great singers, but how do you decide who does the solos? Who’s going to sing what? Piero Barone: Actually, we grow up together, as professionals, because we grew up understanding, what’s the best for the group? What’s the most important thing, the final result, for the group and not for each one of us. So the goal is the group. We have to give all the maximum force that we can for the final result. We never think for ourself, for our ego. We always think for the final result that is the brand Il Volo. So it’s very easy for us to understand which one is to pick the part of the song, because we know who can sing better that part, and who cannot. We really recognize our limits, and we deeply know who has the best voice to make the moment. Because you know each other, and each other’s talents, so well. Ginoble Di Guanluca: Yeah, it’s like, I don’t want to put myself in front of them, and they don’t do the same, because the stronger thing is when we are together. It’s all about recognizing that. It’s like a relationship, you know? You sing primarily in Italian, Do you sing in English as well? Ginoble Di Guanluca: In 2012, we were special guests of Barbra Streisand’s tour, performing with her onstage “Smile” of Charlie Chaplin. And so in our shows we don’t sing just in Italian, we sing American standards, we sing in English, we sing in Italian, we sing in Spanish and many other languages. But we love to sing in English. Allow me to get philosophical for a moment. The Italian language is very romantic. People who don’t speak it, don’t understand the words, still feel it. Is that something you’re aware of when you perform? Ignacio Boschetto: It’s all about frequencies. Songs like ‘My Way’ arrived in every single part of the world because the song is amazing, the melody, and the frequencies. And I think this is what happened with Italian. We sing opera also, and I think this is the strength of opera: Melodies that have been written a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago are still so new, so beautiful, powerful … Piero Barone: Bill, that’s the power of music. My mom, she’s the biggest fan of Elvis Presley. She doesn’t speak English. She doesn’t understand English. But she’s the biggest fan. When you tour – when you come to the States – what accompaniment do you use? Is it a chamber group, tracks, a keyboard player, a full orchestra? Ginoble Di Guanluca: We never go onstage without an orchestra, because it’s eighty percent of our music. We did use tracks very early in our career, when we didn’t have any kind of budget! Luckily a lot of things changed, so now we can bring a full orchestra and travel all around the world bringing bel canto. So this is the most beautiful thing about our shows. We are really proud to bring orchestras. Sometimes we support young orchestras, with a lot of young people, because our goal has always been to bring close this kind of music to younger generations. Because they should discover that this music exists. That it’s something deep and very beautiful to discover. When we went to the Met in New York, it was full of young people. And this is beautiful. Because to stay two to three hours without a phone, without a distraction – forget the world for a few hours and listen to the melody, probably this is a privilege. And it’s really rare to find it not just in the young generation, but adults should remember that this should be normality. 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