A voice is very intimate. It's something of your own. So there's always this fear, because you feel naked. There's a fear of not reaching up to expectations. As you become more famous, people come and expect to hear something extraordinary, so you don't want to disappoint them. I feel this sense of responsibility.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the vulnerability and pressure artists feel in meeting audience expectations.
Andrea Bocelli expresses the intimate nature of one's voice and the accompanying fears that arise from public performance. As an artist gains fame, the expectation for excellence increases, leading to a sense of responsibility and anxiety about not disappointing the audience. This insight highlights the emotional challenges artists face in balancing personal authenticity with external expectations.
In practice
During a speech about the challenges artists face, I could use Bocelli's quote to illustrate the balance of creativity and viewer expectations.
When I get on stage, my first goal is not to show my expertise, but on the contrary, to give a bit of happiness, of joy, of cheerfulness. I am firmly convinced that in order to sing well, you must love your neighbor and be passionate about life.
Opera singing is in every way of inestimable value; a real heritage for all mankind that has been reached over centuries of studies, attempts, flights of the spirit.
To sing opera, one needs two things: the voice and the passion - and above all, the passion.
It's always beautiful to sing with other great voices. I like voices in general. It's a big privilege to have great singers next to me.
A young pregnant wife has been hospitalized for a simple attack of appendicitis. The doctors had to apply ice to her stomach and when the treatments ended the doctors suggested that she abort the child, they told her it was the 'best solution' because the baby would be born with some disability but the young brave wife decided not to abort, and the child was born. That woman was my Mother and I was the child.
Even in the most beautiful music there are some silences, which are there so we can witness the importance of silence.
And when they encounter works of art which show that using new media can lead to new experiences and to new consciousness, and expand our senses, our perception, our intelligence, our sensibility, then they will become interested in this music.
An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer.
Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations ... Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone.
'Let the music play on' would be my legacy.
A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more than itself. It's sort of like a prism, which you can see from each facet a single totality.
So I have no grounds to complain; on the contrary, writers should consider the condition of permanent controversiality to be invigorating, part of the risk envolved in choosing the profesión. It is a fact of life that writers have always and with due consideration and great pleasure spit in the soup of the high and mighty. That is what makes the history of literature analogous to the development and refinement of censorship.
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