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.
I find above all that the expression, atonal music, is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying the art of not falling, or swimming the art of not drowning.
It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?
I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain ending - an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check, and nihilism at bay.
Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.
Having been an actor and a writer for so long - 20 years or so - I felt that it would be daft to go to one's grave without having directed. It's a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.
I got into the business because I love writing. When it came down to finding my voice, which every writer has to take time to do, I think I realized I write black people very well. I write us in a very honest way, and I want to hear the way we really talk.
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