Episode Two: Piero’s Story

Courtesy of Suzana Gutierrez

Before I begin my story today, I have to first tell Piero how very proud all the fans are of his great achievement in the 2023 New York City Marathon. You had us sitting on the edge of our seats for over four hours on Sunday! We watched you cross the Verrazzano Bridge then make your way through all five boroughs of New York City!

Every time someone spotted you they posted a story!

Courtesy of Dario Mirabile

Dario captured you in Long Island City. You were so happy you made all of us happy!

Courtesy of Piero Barone

Courtesy of Piero Barone

Mile after mile we rooted for you and when you crossed the finish line we all cheered!

Courtesy of Federica “Kika” Fina

And Kika caught you at the finish line!

And what did Piero have to say about this experience?

Months ago I decided to challenge myself on a new adventure, the New York City Marathon. I never imagined it would be so difficult to reach this goal, full of beautiful moments but also the ones where I felt I could easily give up. The feeling when you realize you are a few meters away from the finish line made it all worth it.

I would like to thank all the people who accompanied and supported me in this incredible and unforgettable adventure!

Thanks davidcolgan_coach for the great training plan and thanks to @gianluca.personaltrainer who always believed in me from the very beginning!

Thanks also to @dr.marco.scozzari @danilocamilleri and to all my friends who encouraged me every single day!”

⁣Thank you for giving us a wonderful treat. Can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday!

Now let’s return to our regular story…

No matter what Piero calls his secret weapon. I call Piero, the secret weapon of Il Volo. Piero brings drama to the stage, with his magnificent voice, that never fails to give us show-stop moments. Over the last few years, Piero has extended and expanded that voice into the perfect operatic voice, a voice that is so ready for any opera stage in the world.

In my last story, we left Piero and his grandfather on the road to Stefano Tese’ mother’s house for a piano lesson. But, before we move on to Piero’s Secret Weapon and his classical education, I would not do justice to Piero if I didn’t mention what is closest to Piero’s heart. Let’s join Piero in the countryside….

I am proud to say mine is a real Sicilian family, one of those that on Sundays reunites at the grand house, the grandparent’s house. There are great lunches from the first to the sweets, things so good that you cannot even imagine them. And the saga continues, when summer arrives, and everyone moves to the countryside.

From the time I was one until I was thirteen, I spent every summer at my grandparent’s house. And who was there with me, my grandparents and my great-grandmother Lina (my grandmother’s mother). I swear, they were perhaps the most beautiful days of my life, and I will never forget them.

Piero’s grandfather Pietro, his mother’s father, had made a campaign with his hands. He built it all, the house, the plants, the land, everything.

I could not wait for it to be Saturday morning when we lit the wood burning oven. I went to collect wood around the ground, I helped to light the fire, and I helped to take out the pizza. In addition to pizza, we did “u pani impurnatu”, which is bread baked in the oven. How good it was! It kept that good taste all week. The week passed and the next Saturday we started over again. The bread was beautiful, warm and fragrant. We also made the ‘impanate’ which are rolls of pizza dough with vegetables inside, a typical dish of my area. In short, I ate a lot of good things, and it was visible. (I was really fat.)

(Note: It is most likely that the impanate (empanada in Spanish) was introduced in Piero’s region of Sicily in the 16^th century during the Spanish rule of Sicily.)

The ‘campaign’ was also the kingdom of my minicross. I always had a passion for motorcycles and cars. And at age six or seven my father gave me a minicross. It is a cross-country minimoto, but without gears. Why did I tell you that I spent the best time of my life in the country because I was there with my minicross!

Definitely not a minicross!

I have lived the most beautiful adventures in the garden of the Riolo family?

The neighbors in the countryside were the Riolo family. They were the owners of the villa that was right next to Piero’s grandfather’s house. They were the richest family in the country. They lived in Agrigento and since they only came to the villa once a month, the marvelous orchard that surrounded it was practically abandoned.

What was I doing then? I took the minicross, my grandmother would sit on back, and we would get into what we called “a stradella pi ‘Riola”, the road of the Riolo. Their gardens were full of very, beautiful fruits trees. The Riolo’s knew of the raids. My grandmother, Rina, told them that we went to collect the fruit and they gave her permission to do so. My grandfather had worked for Mr. Riolo for many years, and they were family friends. But for me, what was I doing I was going to “steal”, it was a secret.

There were no fences, so you could enter from anywhere. The fact that we entered through the gate in the saddle of the minicross gave me the feeling of really doing something dangerous and secret.

‘Grandma, where are we going?’ I said, even before finishing the road.

‘Lemon trees’ she answered.

‘Here we go!’ And off we go to fill the bag of lemons.

‘Grandma, where are we going now?’

‘Pear trees.’ And off we go to fill the pear bag.

There were peaches, plums, there were fruits of all kinds.

One day, the Riolo’s came to the countryside with us, and they carried a bag of small, round, burgundy fruits. I asked Mr. Riolo, what are these things? I had never seen them before. They tasted very good, very soft, very sweet. They were jujubes.

‘Where did you get them?’ I asked.

‘There are many trees like this,’ Mr. Riolo said. And while Mr. Riolo explained it to me, I already saw myself under the tree picking up the jujubes.

But how did we get the bags home? I put a broomstick on the handlebars of my minicross, we hung the bags on both sides, and we walked.

Also, on the ground were walnuts and prickly pears. We picked up the prickly pears, and then with my great-grandmother we peeled them, she cleaned them without even putting on her gloves, at the end she scraped away the thorns from her hands with the knife, rinsed herself with water, all right.

In the countryside there were almonds. My aunt Lucia, my grandmother’s sister, had them on her land, and in the second half of August she had a “cugliuta di mennule” (almond harvest). There were always two, three huge bags to be shared for the whole family.

Who peeled those almonds? My great-grandmother. Stone fingers, tac, tac, tac. And after who divided the almonds from the skins? I. So, my grandma tac, tac, tac, and I divided. An assembly line!

This was what happened to us in the countryside. They are images that I will never forget.

Now that we’ve listened to Piero’s story about his summers in the countryside it is now time to go back to Piero’s classical education.

So, in my last story about Piero I left him on the road to his piano lesson. So, if you’re Piero, what do you do next to get from that road to the road that leads to stardom? You do what all three guys did! You start by joining a choir.

Let’s listen to what Piero has to say about this first meeting with the choir…

The first thing I find myself in front of these guys who are in a semicircle. I enter, I hear them singing and immediately I see in the center of this semicircle a lady and a gentleman sitting at the piano.  I had just made the acquaintance of the Little Singers of the Philharmonic Association – Santa Cecilia of Agrigento. The association was founded in 1983 and has two choirs, one for white voices and one for adults. Until 2008 they also collaborated with the ‘Sistina’ Music Chapel of Rome, which led the choir to perform before the Pope during the Jubilee and which was opened to the best singers with the possibility of doing an internship in Rome.

The master accompanist was Alfonso Lo Presti and the director of the chorus of white voices was the maestro, Marisa Bonfiglio.

I will owe everything in my life to this lady.

Marisa was right in the middle and waiting for me. My father had warned Marisa that we would go to see the evidence to understand how it worked and if she could like me. I arrive, I was ten years old and, I was pretty chubby and, I find myself in the midst of all females and just two boys, Davide and Arturo.

After the greetings, Marisa asks Piero to introduce himself.

Hi, guys, I’m Piero, Piero Barone, I was born in 1993 and I like to sing. In a chorus what else should I say? If I was there, I had to like music, right? I thought it was the first thing to clarify.

At that point the master Bonfiglio made me sit on the left, next to Davide and Arturo, while all the rest of the chorus – all females – were on the right.  Three males in a world of females:  The number three would be my destiny, right?

We begin to sing Easter songs, Christmas carols, church choir songs.  With Davide and Arturo, I established a very strong relationship, which continues today: we are still friends. We phone each other when I am far from Naro and, when I come back, we go out together as often as we can.

At the time of the choir, we were always attached to each other, we looked at the girls but, we were three losers of nine to ten years, losers!  Marisa never scolded anyone, but if we were disruptive, she looked a little like that and said “Guys,” and we were immediately serious again.

This is the point where Piero’s voice is beginning to change and so adjustments have to be made to accommodate this change. Let’s hear what Piero had to say about that….

Even my passion for red is in some way linked to the chorus of the little singers. I dressed in red, all red from head to toe. They make my presentation and I start to sing. I could still sing but I was at my limit, and I started the Ave Maria.  Until then other tenors have arrived at the end of the piece all red in the face for the effort. Because singing, in reality, requires a much greater physical effort than one imagines. In short, I finish the song, the teacher looks at me, looks at Marisa Bonfiglio, looks at my father, looks at all the others and says: “Do you see this guy? He has everything red, except his face: he sang with incredible ease”. And to my father’s question, ‘What could I do with my son?’ The master replied: ‘Mr. Barone, now your son is having a change of voice, your son in his throat has a diamond. What would I do in his place? I would take this diamond, put it in a safe and hide the keys. Between two years we reopen this safe.’

And, so, we did!

What about those red glasses?

But it must be said, my ‘fixation’ for red glasses was not born here but was born in 2010 in Los Angeles. I was at my first photo shoot, and I went to the studio, it was the first real photo shoot. In short, I had glasses, as always, but one of the photographers who follows us looks at me a little and tells me: ‘You have to keep your glasses, but they must be red.’ And how could I do a pair of red eyeglasses in Los Angeles in one day? I think and think again, in the end the idea came: I called my optician of confidence in Naro, Giuseppe Minio, and I asked him to do it for me. Would you ever believe it? In twenty-four hours, I received the envelope in Los Angeles with my red glasses, and inside I also found rose petals and little hearts, pure affection directly from Naro, which is always good.

But I’m getting ahead of myself I still had to face the change of voice. That moment of change is excruciating because you cannot sing, so no longer being a white voice, I had to leave the chorus. But Marisa Bonfiglio did not let me go like this, ‘Piero, see you soon,’ she cared about me and then helped me again: she took me to Palermo to a conservatory professor, a tenor. The master’s verdict was again, ‘Let’s wait.’  But in the wait, I could not remain silent. In reality, the wait for the change of voice lasted less than I thought because, towards the fourteen and a half years, my voice had already changed.

So, the change happened, and Piero moved on in his life. He did participate in many singing competitions and won most.

But there was also his schoolwork to consider….

Piero said… Had it been for me I would have studied only singing and music.

But in fact, Piero studied accounting. Piero tells us….  I excelled in Math, in fact, I am so good, that I am the one of the three that runs with a bag full of all of our accounts.

In my story about Gianluca, I wrote about passion. What about Piero’s passion? What were his passions?

Piero certainly had a passion for his opera, but his passion went in other directions too.

Piero had a passion for Chemistry and Math but not for all of his school subjects. And, so, I introduce my personal favorite story about Piero, the Story of Denise!

We know if Piero had a passion, it had to be for music but, in this story, we find out he had no great passion for school but, he did have a passion, so to speak, for chemistry and math!

Piero tells us that he had good grades in school because of his Secret Weapon Denise….

Denises’ Wedding Day

Piero said, For Denise I should make a monument.

Denise was Piero’s classmate for twelve years. The good grades were thanks to her. In the afternoon Piero would pick her up in his electric car, an E50, and they would study together. She repeated the lesson, and he learned by what she was saying. Well let me have Piero explain it to you….

I did not like reading books, what could I do? The songs have always remained in my head right away, I listen to a song and after two, three times at most, I know all the words, but the lessons no, these do not come into my head even with the hammering. You imagine that once, out of despair, to memorize a history lesson, I gave it a reason, that is, I put it to music. But when I could not do this – that is, most of the time – I sat next to Denise, and I listened to her repeat the lesson. Or, in classwork, she wrote and did it, zac! She put the paper in the middle of the desk and I copied it. The professors probably knew but they never caught me and so they always gave me that half vote less than she, even if the tasks were the same. But, who cared, I was very happy.

At school, I did not like gymnastics, instead I loved chemistry. I had good marks which I earned by myself. No Denise. And I excelled in Math, in fact, I am so good, that I am the one of the three that runs with a bag full of all of our accounts.

As for the other school subjects, I was always ordered, I was studying only the necessary, I did what I could. It is not that I did not study because of bad will, it was that I had other projects, and the professors knew and understood it. I was not a tramp that ran from morning to night with the motorbike, I was one who was at home studying piano, solfeggio, I had many commitments, I always had something to do.

I was known in the country, I never smoked a cigarette, never used drugs of any kind, never went to the disco, I never did stupid. In short, never.

If you ask Piero’s father, he will surely tell you about the wheelies with the motorbike. It was the only thing that he did not do right. His friends told Mr. Barone that Piero did wheelies and he got angry….

When I arrived at the roundabout in the center of the city, voom, I did a wheelie with the motorbike. Just that. But even in those cases I was very responsible. Do you know what I was doing when I was driving the motorbike? My father gave me sheets of newspaper, I put them on my chest, under my shirt and I went around so the wind did not enter my chest, understood? Full helmet, strictly integral.

If you’re wondering, yes, I was a little weighed in those years but, I was so controlled because, I had a thousand allergies that put my respiratory tract “in danger.” I never went to school trips, I could not go to the disco, I could not do certain things that all my peers did. But now, when I return home I go to the disco, we are never less than twenty, twenty-five people, and Dad is calm because I’m even more responsible than before and because in the group there are also people older than me, even forty years and married.

I like being with people much older than me because, even if I’m only twenty years old, I have to manage my life in a very serious way and at a certain point I had to ‘grow by force.’ It’s strange if I think about it, because that little boy Piero, who was attentive to everything he did, so as not to ruin his voice, and not to have some asthma attack, would never have imagined becoming a singer. He had other plans.

So, we come to the end our story today with Piero in the choir and continuing his classical education. We found out that Denise was Piero’s Secret Weapon but it seems from this story Piero had more than one secret weapon and as I said in the beginning, for me Piero is Il Volo’s secret weapon.

I want to end my story today with Piero singing the beautiful “Lamento di Federico,” an aria from act 2 of the opera L’arlesiana by Francesco Cilea. Absolutely beautiful! Bravo Piero!

Next time we will follow Piero to the competitions which will lead him to Ti Lascio una Canzone.

Join me next week as I go back Through the Fields of My Mind and open the door to a new adventure!

Next we week follow Ignazio kicking and screaming to Marsala where he meets his fate. The future he least expected.

*What I have written here are excerpts from the book the guys wrote about their lives. “Il Volo, Un’avventura Straordinario, La Nostra Storia.” (An Extraordinary Adventure, Our Story) This is just a small piece of each mans’ story. The book is written in Italian. If you can read Italian, I would highly recommend that you read it. It’s wonderful! If not, I can only hope that someday it will be translated into English. Or you can use Google Translate to translate it.

I also recommend you read their second book “IL Volo: Quello Che Porto Nel Cuore” (What I Carry in My Heart).

Just in time for Christmas, the guys released a new EP 4Xmas Amazing Grace, O Tannenbaum, Feliz Navidad and Happy Xmas (the War is Over) order yours now on Spotify, Amazon, etc.

If you would like to share a story with me, please email:  susan.flightcrew@yahoo.com

To read more Il Volo stories visit us at www.ilvoloflightcrw.com and don’t forget to visit the Archives.

Credit to owners of all photos and videos

 

 

Episode One: Gianluca’s Story

Passions are the stuff men are made of! Gianluca is all about passion. I sometimes find it so difficult to write about Gianluca because he really doesn’t share words! He shares passions.  Gianluca talks in passions, not words.

I know I’ve written about his passions before but that is who Gianluca is and that’s how I need to present him. Even when he describes Montepagano, he describes it with passion. Think about how he can make you feel the crow in flight and visualize the sea below ….

*To be precise, I grew up, in Montepagano, on a hill two hundred meters as the crow flies and ten minutes by road from the sea, and Roseto degli Abruzzi.

This is a beautiful vision that can only be expressed through passion, Gianluca’s Passion!

Where does this passion come from? We need to look back on Gianluca’s childhood and feel what he felt as a child. Gianluca lived a very simple life. He had a calm and peaceful childhood. He didn’t have the challenges that Ignazio had or the intense classical education that Piero had.

There were no great demands on him. Just beautiful childhood days.

From a very young age he sang but his songs were for his own pleasure. He just enjoyed singing and he sang when and where he pleased without a thought for anyone around him. Ironically, when he was called upon to sing, he was very shy and would turn his face to the wall and sing.

So, we can certainly understand how music is a passion for Gianluca, but he has other passions and all these passions combined make up the person we know as Gianluca Ginoble.

My name is Gianluca Ginoble. I was born on February 11, 1995, at the Atri hospital….

The accents are beautiful, the dialects are beautiful, but I can say that what I prefer is the Abruzzese? I am very proud to be from Abruzzo. I love everything about this region. And I like to bring Abruzzo around the world and keep it high.

I am right at the sea. I’m relaxing, I’m calm! There is a sea breeze and nothing else. It’s Thursday and I am practically alone on the beach. I’m fine, from God! I’m fine because I’m home.

So, we introduce another passion. Passion for his Abruzzo. Gianluca describes his home his country as a place where he is at peace….

When I come home, I relax and I am calm, as I cannot be anywhere else in the world. And now, I can say I’ve seen a lot of places in the world. Coming home to Abruzzo, I feel like I am on vacation. Montepagano is right on top of the hill facing the sea, it seems to look like a postcard. It is here that I can get away from everything and everyone and stay in peace.

Gianluca certainly has a great passion for Abruzzo but how does he see Abruzzo in the future….

Montepagano is a perfect place, a kind of paradise, but what concerns me is I see Abruzzo “emptying.” The boys achieve a diploma and go to study in Bologna or farther. This is not new this is something that I have seen since I was a child.

But what about Gianluca’s other passions. His passion for family and soccer. Let’s listen to what Gianluca has to say about his childhood and how all his passions combined make Gianluca who he is….

My life as a child seems so far away. I remember, very, little of my childhood! It’s like twenty years have passed but, only five have passed. I’m not like Ignazio.  I was born and raised in Montepagano. I was traveling only with dreams. What made me dream? Music naturally.

I had a radio with a knob that turned to find the radio station. What am I looking for? The songs of Andrea Bocelli, my absolute idol. Or Domenico Modugno, or others of this kind. In the summer, I would take the radio along when I went with my friends in what we call la pinetina (the small pine forest), that is a park with wooden games and tables and with lots of green space. Like today I was looking for music, for songs that inspired me and made me dream. My friends would listen to my music but, they liked Eiffel 65 and music from the early 2000s, and so they would tell me, come on, change…! What is this? I liked modern genres, I listened to everything, but what I loved was something else.

In November 2000, when Gianluca was five and a half years old, his brother Ernesto was born. Gianluca tells us how he shared his dreams with his brother, Ernesto and how he became Gianluca’s closest friend and confidant….

I was five and a half years old when I started to hum. A year later I started to get interested in Bocelli and Modugno.

So, Ernesto’s is in his cradle and he’s listening to me sing these melodies. The most beautiful thing I remember, and it is a memory that I have printed in my head is when Ernesto was big enough to come to the small pine forest too, I made him listen to these songs that my friends did not appreciate. We sat close together on the ground, and I placed the radio on my legs, or I sat on the swing with the radio resting on the ground and we listened to music that was so unusual for our age. I told him my dreams. I do not think I’ve ever had this confidence with anyone, and even today, it’s like that with my brother. The result is Ernesto has a natural talent for music. He has something “musically speaking,” both when he strums the piano in the living room, and when he sings. Who knows…studying? Today I trust him as I do not trust anyone else. After an exhibition I go to him for his opinion. Ernesto, how did I sing? Did you like the performance? He answers, well, yes, maybe you’ve been a little waning there. Ernesto always understands and gives me his opinion. He has never studied music, he has never studied singing, but he always knows how to give me the right advice, the right vision. It’s like when we sing together: I play the melody and he immediately makes harmony. At his age, I did not do that. I think the radio did well by him.

As I grew older, I became more passionate about singing, including the great American classics, first of all Frank Sinatra.

I’ve never studied music, if I have to tell the truth, but the music at home has always been there. My grandfather Ernesto has been a musician since he was a boy. He played the contralto flugelhorn in the band of the town, he toured all of Abruzzo doing performances with the band and has always been a lover of the opera.

My father Ercole, studied music, played drums and sometimes he still does. Let’s say he’s more rock than grandfather!

Dad and mom realized that I had something special in my voice when I started to sing at the age of three or four years. But, as it has always been, they let things take their way without ever forcing me.

Gianluca’s grandfather was the first to think of bringing him closer to music. He had a classic taste, more “popular” to say, he is one of those gentlemen who fifty years ago listened to Luciano Tajoli, but he is also an opera lover.

So, around the age of eight or ten, I began to listen to classical music, opera, especially Luciano Pavarotti, and some genre of music from the Fifties to the Sixties.

I took the tape recorder and put the cassettes in, my parents told me, it seemed like I was immersing myself in those notes.

They tell me that, when I was three years old, I sang ‘O Sole Mio’ in the town square in front of all the elderly gentlemen friends of my grandfather who, sitting around the bar table, were listening to this little boy with such a particular voice.

This was my first audience but, of course I don’t remember it. My grandfather wanted me to study music, he always told me: ‘Gianluca, study the piano, study an instrument.’ I’ve never done it. It would be a dream to sit down on the piano and startlaying and singing. Let’s say it’s one of my next goals: learning to play the piano.

As we know, since then Gianluca has studied piano.

While my grandfather made me listen to classical music, Pavarotti and music from the Fifties-Sixties, my father made me feel Fabrizio De Andrè, Francesco De Gregori, Giorgio Gaber, and Antonello Venditti.

So, let’s say that as a child I had a beautiful musical culture. What was left of that period? The classical opera no, because today I do not listen to it, it is not part of me and, I do not feel it particularly mine. The only opera singer I keep listening to is Andrea Bocelli, but I have come to him by another road.

So, we begin to understand how Gianluca’s grandfather and father were very instrumental in Gianluca’s musical education. Though he never had a music lesson in his life he lived with two men who shared all their musical expertise with him, and this was the greatest foundation for Gianluca’s musical journey which would lead him to the stage of Ti Lascio Una Canzone!

What about Gianluca’s education? It’s seems he really wasn’t all that crazy about school but he in fact he had a great knack for languages something that would come in handy when he began to tour….

I never liked school. I was a lazy man and I’ve never been a great scholar. But in spite of it, I had good grades. I liked algebra in middle school. But most of all I had always been fascinated by languages: Spanish, French, English. I did not have a hard time studying them, I am naturally inclined to study languages. I remember that when we sang the first songs in English and Spanish, I was the one who took the least time to do the right phrase, with the right pronunciation, because I immediately feel the musicality of foreign languages. I contribute this to listening to Sinatra who had perfect pronunciation and I understood every single word of what he sang. It was a great way to learn pronunciation and even the songs.

After middle school I did not choose to go to linguistic high school, it was only because I thought that with my work I would travel, and I would learn the languages directly.

In 2009, I enrolled in a classical high school as a privatist to study Greek, Latin and French translations. This is also difficult. I liked Greek more than Latin. Then unfortunately I had to stop in the second year, I could no longer continue because the work was too demanding.

If I have any regrets about my school years, it’s that I never studied music when I was ten or eleven. But there is still time.

Between the age of eleven and thirteen, Gianluca enjoyed playing soccer, long games with Pokemon cards and, and always music!

So now we come to Gianluca’s great passion for soccer. Not only did he have a passion for it, he excelled at it. Listen to how Gianluca talks about soccer. There is passion in his words….

Football has always been a great passion of mine. This too, like music, is a family passion.

My father is a big fan of Pescara, as is my grandfather. They were also big fans of Vialli, no matter which team he played on because he was a myth for my father. And because Gianluca Vialli also had a name that appealed to both my father and mother, when I was born, they named me Gianluca. Let’s say that name aside, my father gave me a piece of football culture. I am a big fan of Roma football, before Il Volo, more so. I watched all the games, I did not miss one, and every time Totti beat a penalty, I covered my head with my arms and, if I heard the scream from the television, I screamed from home. But now there are work commitments and that prevents me from following my favorite team. Even now, despite the commitments, I continue to play football as soon as I can.

When I go back to Montepagano I always try to organize a game with old friends with whom I trained in the youth teams of Roseto.

How did I play soccer? I was good, come on, I did not like losing, I wanted to score goals by force, I never passed the ball, and when I had the ball, I scored. Let’s say that I was a bit “instinctive” even on the football field.

Once when I was playing in Pescara there was a score of 4 to 4. I had already scored two goals, but the draw was not enough for me, I wanted the win. Only the field was difficult, it had rained, so there was a lot of mud. What happened? I pull, huge slide and I fill myself with mud, from head to toe. What do I do? I start shouting, ‘I got dirty!’ In all this, it must be said that the game was true, even if we were very young. There was the championship, with the ranking and everything else, it’s not that you could take and do what was going on in your head. The referee shouts, ‘Get up, what are you playing ball.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m leaving, I’m all dirty!’ He shouts, ‘get up and go to the locker room.’ Not for nothing, they don’t call me the ‘little Cassano’ (famous Italian soccer player) for nothing. Cassano was so good and, he was so restless!’

Another time we were at the Borghesiana in Rome, at a national tournament. The Roseto was also in series C2 and even in the very young there were good coaches, competent, good, that when they told you one thing, that was that, because they knew what they were talking about. In that game at the Borghesiana, I do not even remember, against who we were, I did not score goals, the coach took me away from the game. At the beginning I came back on the bench nice quiet, but after a moment they did everything to restrain me. “I want to go in! I want to score!” I was shouting. I kicked the coach. Now obviously, I would not do it again, even if football is still my passion.

Want to know how good Gianluca is, watch this video of the guys playing soccer for charity.

Let’s listen to what Gianluca had to say about the match. This is one of my favorite videos. The guys gave it their all. Gianluca proved that he never gives up until he gets his goal!  Ignazio was also a great soccer player as a child, but he had to give it up when he started studying music. Piero never played soccer but his performance in this match was superb….

You cannot imagine the happiness of playing in the ‘Partita del Cuore,’ (Match of the Heart) a Telethon for Charity on June 2, 2015, at Juventus Stadium. The stadium, in fact, made Ignazio happy more than anyone, because he is a huge Juventino (a big fan of Juventus). I was more excited about having been called up for the first time in the National singers and even more for being able to score. The match was against the team of Champions for research, all great sports champions and big names in the show, from Alex Del Piero to Pavel Nedved, from Jorge Lorenzo to Liam Gallagher of Oasis. What a dream it was! The stadium was full of people cheering crazy. My team was losing, when I came in, we were 3 to 4 and not being able to do anything, apart from shouting directions to my team-mates on the pitch, it made me feel even more strained. It’s like, I know how to play football, you see the others, think about what you would do for them and tell them. No, you scream it, otherwise they will not hear you. Ignazio and I shrieked like crazy to Piero, and then Piero and I shrieked like crazy to Ignazio, but ‘my legs are trembling’, I had to run, enter the pitch, I wanted to score.

The coach made me enter in the 83^rd minute.

We were, as I said, under a goal, but I do not like losing football. So, I took the ball and I scored. What magic! The stadium was screaming, the guys ran to hug me, it was almost like winning the Sanremo Festival again.

So, Gianluca has scored not just in soccer but in music. An amazing young man with a tremendous voice. 

We’ve come to the end of Gianluca’s story for today but let’s think about this for a moment. If Gianluca hadn’t become a singer, would he have become a soccer player? He was really good as is evident in the video!

Gianluca’s story today was really about his passion for family, country, music and soccer. All the things that make Gianluca who he is. If we take all those passions and roll them into one big ball we find the romantic Gianluca. Isn’t romance about passion? I think Gianluca’s Passion explains why he is so romantic!

How do I relate to this story? For one thing, my paternal grandparents were from Abruzzo. Their town of Introdacqua is about an hour from Montepagano.

The other thing we have in common is I had the same feeling for music that Gianluca did as a child. Every day I woke up singing! I, like Gianluca, loved to sing for myself. I didn’t need an audience. It was only later that I began to sing with friends of mine. My great teenage years. And yes, I still wake up singing every day.

*What I have written here are excerpts from the book the guys wrote about their lives. “Il Volo, Un’avventura Straordinario, La Nostra Storia.” (An Extraordinary Adventure, Our Story) This is just a small piece of each mans’ story. The book is written in Italian. If you can read Italian, I would highly recommend that you read it. It’s wonderful! If not, I can only hope that someday it will be translated into English. Or you can use Google Translate to translate it.

I also recommend you read their second book “IL Volo: Quello Che Porto Nel Cuore” (What I Carry in My Heart).

And let’s not forget the new album. “Tres Voces Un Alma.”

Available on Spotify, Amazon, and other music media!

Join me next week as I go back Through the Fields of My Mind and open the door to a new adventure!  Next week we return to Naro and continue our journey with Piero.

If you would like to share a story with me, please email:  susan.flightcrew@yahoo.com

To read more Il Volo stories visit us at www.ilvoloflightcrw.com

Credit to owners of photos and videos.