As Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly and company sang in the old movie, On the Town:
New York New York, It’s a Wonderful Town The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down Il Volo’s back and there’s no better sound. New York New York, It’s a Wonderful Town
Sorry, I changed the lyrics a little.
Although I live in Denver, I had the opportunity to go to the Il Volo Radio City Concert in New York City on March 21. I grew up in New Jersey, and as a young person, New York was my old hangout, so I took a quick round-trip flight and treated myself to a few days in Manhattan. I had not been to an Il Volo concert since Atlantic City in 2022, so it’s been nearly three years. As the title of this post says, three years was too long to go without seeing and hearing the guys. Besides, Radio City’s spectacular period architecture makes it a great setting to catch up with them.
I also had a soundcheck access. For days on end I watched for email instructions where and when to meet for the “Il Volo soundcheck experience.” I finally got my answer. It was cancelled, and there was no information why. If anybody knows what happened, please write a comment and let me know.
I was disappointed, but not for long. The show itself is always exciting and gets better every season, in my opinion.
Qualcosa di Carino: Something Nice
Every time I travel to hear an Il Volo concert, something nice happens to me even before I get there, and often afterwards. The morning of the show, I was doing errands near Grand Central Terminal and got frustrated when I couldn’t find the entrance to the market. I grabbed the first uniformed worker I could find to ask directions, and his answer came back in the most delicious Italian-accented broken English. I switched to Italian and found out he and his wife were both from Reggio Palermo in Sicily, like my mother’s family. I’m sure the desk security people in that lobby were wondering why this strange tourist lady ended up hugging and kissing the janitor. It’s an Italian thing. We speak the same dialect; we even talk with the same hand gestures.
You may have seen Ignazio or Piero do this gesture with one hand, to ask “what in the world is wrong with you,” or “what do you want from me.”
Ignazio also been known to do this one with both hands, but the accompanying words he says when he does that are often not printable.
Not just us Sicilians, but all Italians speak with their hands, as you can see. Gianluca here is not singing, he’s answering Ignazio’s complaint that after learning English in Sicily, Igna still can’t pronounce “contemporary” or “Massachusetts,” among other things. Gian was telling Igna, “If you can’t, then don’t.”
This next gesture is my favorite one, because if you see it, you know you’re in the middle of an Il Volo concert.
I was staying in the Hilton right across the street from Radio City on the 51st Street side. To put in a plug, a top-class Italian restaurant, Il Duomo 51, was right in my hotel. It’s called duomo (cathedral), because St. Patrick’s Cathedral is right on the other corner of 51st. Very talented chef, all the young wait staff speak English with heavy Italian accents, and a lot of them look alike. They are probably all relatives of the manager or the sous-chef or somebody. When they realized I could actually pronounce the menu choices, they started plying me with free glasses of Italian pistachio liquor. Yes, it’s green.
So, on to the Show.
There is almost no need to tell you Radio City sold out. I think Il Volo have sold this place out almost every time they’ve been here. According to Gianluca, this is their fourth visit to this venue. Igna later said he hoped next time they’d be in Madison Square Garden. I hope so too. Then we’ll hear jokes about how Ignazio can’t pronounce “Knickerbockers.” Most New Yorkers don’t bother to pronounce it, either. That’s why they call the home team the “Knicks.”
On the concert evening, I started writing this piece, then went downstairs early to see how fast the line was forming. I could tell the whole Il Volo crew was already in the theater because an equipment van was blocking me from crossing the narrow street, and what Gianluca used to refer to as the “sleepy buses” were already there with a line of blacked out Mercedes SUVs behind them, extending right up to my hotel lobby. I can even see my room in these pictures. I left my desk light on.
I went into the theater early and checked out the sound control gear and mix boards, since I had time. I was wearing a “Flight Crew” badge, so for some reason, the theater staff didn’t care where I walked around or what I looked at. I keep finding that badge thing is quite useful.
I Tempi Cambiano: The Times They Are a Changin’
So, what has changed in three years since I last heard Il Volo live? All of you know most of this list. Obviously, their young adult lives changed. Ignazio is a married man. Piero finished the NY Marathon. Gianluca has another different girlfriend (who seems lovely.)
The show and their “stage look” have also changed. Their new wardrobe for the opening set has those shiny appliques on their jackets. The set list changed to provide a journey through the history of bel canto. They wrote or rehearsed new jokes.
Piero gets more elegant as he matures; and he has different eyeglasses yet again. Gianluca is clean-shaven and no longer styles the curls out of his hair. His new boots are more sparkly. This picture doesn’t really capture how sparkly.
But there were very important things that did not change. The guys are clearly all adults now, yet they have maintained their youthful charm and energy. They still don’t take themselves too seriously. And as hard as they work, it still looks like they are playing. They still create warmth and joy, even though there is a more mature elegance about their act now.
Il Volo Fans Are the Best
I had the most wonderful seatmates in my row. Clara and her daughter Angela were to my right. Clara was born near Roma and has been in the US 60 years. She and her adult daughter my age spoke primarily Italian to each other, so I also switched to Italian. These ladies were “veterans,” having been to several Il Volo concerts in Radio City before this one. I loved hearing their Roman Italian, which is clean without any heavy regional accent.
To my left were Paul and Toni Conti (nee “Licalzi”). Toni joked that her maiden name means “socks.” That was pleasing to me because my son had a friend in Boy Scouts whose cognome (surname) name was “Scarpa”, which means “shoe.” Now, I’ve met a full set. The Contis are likewise veterans of at least four Il Volo shows. Toni also told me about their trip to their home region in Sicily. Her beautiful epilogue to the story was that after their visit, she and Paul finally understood “who they are” and “why they are the way they are.” That warmed my heart, because I had the same experience in the same place. The Il Volo Flight Crew were the first people to let me share those feelings when I wrote my first post for this web page a few years ago.
OK. One more set of neighbors. The couple sitting diagonally in front of me bore a remarkable resemblance to Ercole and Eleonora Ginoble, Gianluca’s parents. Take a look. What do you think?
If you said yes, you were right. Halfway through the show, Gianluca asked the orchestra to pause so he could say hello to his aunt and uncle, and his parents. Ercole eventually got up to take a stretch, but Gian’s proud Mamma kept recording one of his solos, as you can see. Piero later said Michele Torpedine was around somewhere too, but I didn’t spot him or the white hair. In concerts in Italy, I’ve heard Piero sometimes refer to Michele as Quello dai capelli bianchi, “He of the White Hair.”
Early in the show, Piero decided to tease some fans who came in late and were getting into their seats toward his left. He announced he was pleased that he, at least, was on time, and for the first time an Italian had to wait for the Americans. Gianluca also thought that was clever, as you can see.
I thought Piero was funnier later, when he said how honored Il Volo was to perform in the place where the “rockets” were. He didn’t mean the old Saturn V or the Titan missile or the SpaceX Starship. He meant the “Rockettes”, which became obvious when Ignazio started dancing an imitation of the Rockette strut kick.
On to the Music
I filled in a lot of gaps in my Il Volo concert experience. Because I had missed several years of performances, I never heard Il Volo’s version of the Sound of Silence or Gian’s version of Bridge Over Troubled Waters, both written by native New Yorker Paul Simon, or Zucchero Fornacieri’s Miserere. I have recordings of Phantom of the Opera, but Gian’s delivery of Music of the Night has greater heart and romance to it. Because I didn’t have time to travel during Il Volo’s first years of performing as teenagers, I never heard them do Funiculi, Funicula live, although I have their early recoding of it. On stage, they managed to turn this old Neapolitan folksong into a near “popera” masterpiece.
The guys introduced their guest, Cecile, who is helping to expand the repertoire of pop music sung as bel canto. She did an impressive interpretation of “Natural Woman,” made famous by Aretha Franklin, of course. What a voice, and I swear that Italian young lady got some soul. It was also sweet to hear her join the guys for E Piu Ti Penso. It’s a mark of Il Volo’s maturity as performers that they are comfortable sharing the stage with both newbies and old-timers. I knew they have been doing that regularly on Italian stages and on their albums (with Placido Domingo, Pia Toscano, Eros Ramazzotti, and any number of others), but I didn’t know they were doing it on US stages. It was fitting for them to feature a relative “newbie.” On the Radio City stage this night, they dedicated Charlie Chaplin’s Smile to honor Barbara Streisand, who once shared the stage with them in Las Vegas, when they were newbies themselves.
I did remember some antics in the show that came from previous concerts. Ignazio did his usual ticking off on his fingers the three counts as he extended the note in “Ma na’a’a’tu sole” in O Sole Mio. Piero, as you can see below, has his fist up to count the famous five (or more) he can do. As usual, they did this in pantomime without missing a beat.
The best way to explain the entire show in one sentence was that I was thunderstruck. There is no other word.
If you enjoy quality music, you know that “power” is not simply volume or clarity of sound. It is sincere emotion and love of the subject translated into intensity and throbbing virtuoso delivery. In their own way in this show, the guys musically narrated the story of bel canto, their professional passion, holding back nothing. Every song they performed, from the Ennio Morricone movie pieces, like Se, to Verdi’s La Donna e Mobile from Rigoletto, to the Neapolitan standby Torna a Sorriento, to Il Volo’s San Remo winner Grande Amore, was as energetic as always, but more elegant at the same time.
The repeated standing ovations throughout the evening said it better than I can. To put it another way, as I was leaving the theater, I looked around and had to smile as I noticed many people were showing each other how their hands were still shaking. It ended up being one of those nights when it’s hard to go to sleep.
Full Circle
I told you nice things always happen to me coming and going from hearing Il Volo. I stopped by a Messianic synagogue to attend services Saturday morning, before I went to LaGuardia Airport to catch il volo (the flight) home. I assumed Beth El (86th Street and Park Avenue) would be typical New York with American English-speaking people and maybe a few Yiddish-speaking or Sephardic Spanish-speaking people thrown in or maybe an Israeli or two. To my delight, the first two people I met who welcomed me in spoke Italian. (Half the articles in their congregation web site are in Italian, too). Go figure! So once again I reverted to my comfort zone and spent much of the morning jabbering in Italian (except of course when we were supposed to be praying or singing or dancing). Remarkably, when I told several folks I had flown across the country for an Il Volo concert, nobody looked at me like “You’re crazy.” or “Who are they?” They understood. It made a nice bookend to a “start-in-Italian, finish-in-Italian, speak Italian every day” kind of trip, and I never set foot outside the US.
