Andrea Bocelli will give concerts in Shanghai. [Photo/China Daily]

 

The biggest-selling artist in the history of classical music, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli will give his one and only concert on the Chinese mainland this year, at Mercedes-Benz Arena on April 30.

Jose Carreras, one of "The Three Tenors", will perform a solo concert in Daning Theater in Shanghai on May 2.

Carreras, from Spain, together with his fellow countryman Placido Domingo and Italian Luciano Pavarotti, toured extensively from 1990 to 2003 under the banner "The Three Tenors", achieving global recognition and commercial success.

Bocelli was born in 1958 and is 12 years younger than Carreras. He was sometimes called "the Fourth Tenor". Pavarotti, who died in 2007, was known to say of Bocelli: "I will not sing better than him".

Bocelli, however, did not like to make comparisons. He told China Daily that the last time he saw Pavarotti: "He was already very ill, we spent the whole time speaking of music, of voices, of performances.

"The most important lesson I drew from his advice is about technique. He taught me how to pursue the goal to sing effortlessly, so as to use the voice like an instrument capable of giving the best, without ever encountering trouble. A fundamental point, because if you do not acquire it, at my age you may run the risk of damaging your instrument beyond any hope."

Both Bocelli and Carreras have long ties with China. Bocelli performed solo concerts in Shanghai and Beijing in 2003 and 2004. He sang at the opening ceremony of the World Expo Shanghai in 2010, and in 2011, he held two concerts in Beijing as part of his tour of Asia. Carreras has also performed in China multiple times and recorded a Chinese folk song In a Faraway Place for one of his albums.

Bocelli chose Shanghai for his 2013 concert tour as "the result of a series of more complex contingencies", but said he was happy to return to the Chinese city.

"I am eager to meet once again those wonderful audiences that have already shown so much affection for me, and at the same time re-live the magic of a unique town, a mixture of East and West, futuristic architecture and traditional pagoda houses," Bocelli says.