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Andrea Bocelli, opera's newest pop star and the man earmarked by some to be the "fourth tenor," got his start in the courtroom, not the concert hall.
A decade ago, the 39-year-old Italian who makes his Toronto debut at the Molson Amphitheatre Monday, abandoned his job as a court-appointed defence lawyer to pursue singing.
"Very often I asked myself why I studied law," Bocelli says, shifting between eloquent Italian and broken English with the help of a translator, during a recent phone conference with 17 North American journalists.
"My passion for opera is very old. I began to listen when I was a child. I was really impressed by these big voices.
"My parents told me always, 'You can try to sing, but can't live just with dreams, you need something more concrete.' "
Bocelli also knows something about challenges. He was born with glaucoma and went blind after injuring his head during a childhood soccer game.
And, while his singing career had humble beginnings, he overcame them quickly.
He did time playing popular favorites in a Pisa, Tuscany, piano bar before tracking down great tenor Franco Corelli. Bocelli convinced Corelli to teach him.
In 1992 he sang on an opera demo written by U2's Bono and Italian pop star Zucchero. The song was intended for Luciano Pavarotti, who upon hearing the demo insisted that Bocelli was the man for the job.
Bocelli's first album, Viaggio Italiano, caught on in Europe. But in Canada his real breakthrough came last year with the "popera" hit, Time To Say Goodbye, which featured British singer Sarah Brightman, and the album Romanza, which went on to sell 800,000 copies -- half-a-million of them in Quebec.
His new album, Aria, has already gone gold.
"Success is something that is indefinable," says Bocelli. "It doesn't have a regular channel. It comes to you without any reason and it can also leave you without any reason."
The singer says he's made use of his fame to bring classical music and opera to a new audience.
Aria is his first pure opera recording, but consists of short "hits."
He admits he has gotten flak from opera purists over his pop crossover.
"There was a certain influence of such people in the beginning," he says through his translator. "Then, as my success grew, there were more and more of these purists complaining. But I've noticed that they're dying out. That kind of criticism has diminished quite a bit recently."
He adds with a laugh: "The idea that maybe there is something obscene in selling 700,000 compact discs might not be far off."
The purists can catch Bocelli on Bravo! Aug. 1 at 7 p.m. starring in La Boheme, which was staged at Teatro Comunale de Cagliari in Italy.
Bocelli says he still gets nervous in concert. "I do it because I have to do it," he says.
Still, he's surprisingly cool and gracious about his purported role as a possible Pavarotti successor.
"People speak of four tenors," he says. "It would be better to speak about 40 tenors or 400 tenors. In the world there are many wonderful tenors. In the world it is very difficult to be famous. This is the work of the lucky.
"I'm very happy to give happiness to everyone like my favorite singers gave to me."