Andrea Bocelli - Sogno

I do not-a speak-a Italiano, so I was very pleased to see that there were full English translations of all these songs in the handsome interior booklet. I didn’t really know most of the Bocelli story before I looked it up for this record, but you may be familiar with it. Blind since age twelve, given his big break by Luciano Pavarotti recommending his demo tape, got his concert film picked up by PBS and his songs to soundtrack the Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas, and ultimately smashed every sales record for a non-English language album with his compilation Romanza.

Sogno is the first album Bocelli recorded after that wave of incredible success, and the pressure shows in his music. Bocelli is the star of the show, and he’s mixed very forward and mic’d for detail. Unfortunately, he sounds strained and uncomfortable on a lot of the takes that end up on the album. His signature belted tenor crumples under its own power on opener “Canto della Terra” and he’s constantly threatening to go flat on the title track “Sogno”. A lot of the synth strings and burbling strat arpeggios have aged poorly, and not all of the orchestral songs are well-done either. I suspect that UMG fast-tracked the production of Sogno to capitalize on his success in North America.

Andrea Bocelli cycles through songwriters on Sogno. “Cantico”, written by Mauro Malavasi, gives Bocelli something dramatic and dark to dig his teeth into, and features Bocelli’s cleanest vocal performance. The other Malavasi songs “Mai Più Così Lontano” and “A Mio Padre” are melodramatic rather than dramatic. There are also two Ennio Morricone originals near the tail end of the album, but neither Bocelli nor the orchestra quite stick the landing on both of them.

As a crossover vocal album, of course it has duets. I was shocked to recognize “The Prayer”, a song from Quest for Camelot, a an animated film that we got from the Walmart bargain bin and watched over as kids. I think the version from the film only has Celine Dion in it, but the album version is a powerful duet set to real strings and e-piano. “‘O Mare E Tu” is a lush, arabesque Fado song, where Dulce Pontes steals the spotlight in Portuguese. Eros Ramazzotti’s good-natured pop brightness on “Nel Cuore Lei” makes for odd bedfellows with Bocelli’s classical pretensions. The duets on Sogno tend to be good, but Bocelli is always overshadowed by his guest or by the pop instrumentation. In sum, the best songs on this CD are good in spite of Bocelli. It’s a few good songs and a lot of rushed, dated, tacky ones.

Sogno by Andrea Bocelli is a bad album and I don’t like it.