It seems Christmas came early this year. I really wanted to attend the concert at the Valley of the Temples, but I have to be in Italy on September 16^th, and I just couldn’t justify going to Italy so early.

I’m told the concert was spectacular. Could it be anything less? Afterall, it is an Il Volo Concert. I can’t wait to see the Special on December 24^th on Rai and the PBS Special.

As you know I write a Christmas story every year and this year will be no exception. I always write about the family because this is the one time of the year that the guys put aside for their family. 

For the guy’s family is family. And not just blood.   When they first started out, they traveled with one of their parents. Sometimes a father and sometimes a mother. And so it was that the mother of one became the mother of three and so it was also with the fathers. Three families joined as one. But eventually the parents stayed home, and one person took over for all six parents ~ Barbara Vitali.

But now I’m getting ahead of the story….

As we all know, after the guys won Ti Lascio una Canzone, they embarked on the tour of a lifetime. Why do I say a lifetime? Because since the first time they came to America they have continued to come back year after year and each time they are as welcome as they were the first time.

Part of that first journey brought the guys to Los Angeles where, at the invitation of Quincy Jones’, they joined “We are The World for Haiti” a charity event. They performed alongside 80 other international artists including Celine Dion, Bono, Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand, Usher, Natalie Cole, and more.

Il Volo were the only Italian artists to be invited.

The three voices from the background caused such a sensation that everyone was asking, “Who was that?” They couldn’t believe what they were hearing but, “Who were they?” Soon they would find out!

Barbara Streisand took notice of them and in 2012, she invited the guys to join her on her “Back to Brooklyn Tour,” which included twelve performances in the United States and Canada. They were not an opening act, no, they shared the stage with Barbara. To the guys this was a dream come true!

By 2012, only three years after they were joined together, they had become quite an item.

The guys were riding high, and they were preparing to record “We Are Love” at the beginning of 2013 but suddenly things changed.  Not only their lives, but their whole relationship. Their lives took on a whole new meaning….

One night in autumn in Miami everything changed, and the guys would become brothers and Barbara Vitali would become a mother who they dearly needed and loved. Her actions along with those of Piero and Gianluca made them a family that night.

This is one of those sad stories, but it is a story that turned out well.

I’ll let the guys tell you about that night.

Let’s begin with Ignazio since it is his story….

After the tour we started thinking about the second album and if I remember correctly, in April the album was released and in August the new tour began, from Vancouver, Canada. We will never forget that tour.

In September there was an episode that marked the relationship between us guys. It united us even more and made us understand that we three are the strength!

Miami, September 24^th, was an evening like many others. We decided to go out with a group of friends to one of the most “in” Italian restaurants in South Beach.

The evening started well. We were having a lot of fun. The owner knew us well. He had us sit in the club that was on the top floor of the building where only members went. There were about fifty people there. We had dinner and from that point I remember only when I got on the sofa and when I woke up.

Piero continues….

Each of us lives bad, unhappy moments, sad moments, but I think that day, that night in Miami was the worst of my life. I remember every little detail and in a hundred years I will still remember it.  We were in a famous restaurant in Miami, which was a restaurant and a disco, and at some point, after dancing a bit, we went out to move to another nightclub with some friends. I got in a taxi with one of them. Ignazio got into a car with someone else who had a two-seater car. We made our way in the taxi to the disco, which was very close to the restaurant.

So, we arrive in front of the room and I state that we do not drink. A glass of wine at the table, yes, but always in moderation. Sometimes we like to joke and pretend to be drunk. That night Ignazio was doing it with me, like talking on the phone with his wallet.

I know him very well, but for a moment I thought he was really drunk, but the bad thing was that he was not at all, and we only found out much later.

So, the taxi leaves me in front of the disco. Ignazio and his friend drive around the block to find parking. I wait in front of the door to see them turn the corner and then come together.

At a certain point, I saw our friend coming, but I no longer saw Ignazio.

I say: Excuse me, but where is Ignazio?

The Friend: He took a taxi and went to the hotel.

Ah okay. But then I had a doubt! It came to me that flash of Ignazio pretending to talk on the phone with his wallet.

Excuse me: I’m going back to the subject, but did you really see him get in the cab and say the address.

The Friend: No, I left him in front of my car.

The nightmare started then. Do you know what nightmare means?          

I pick up the phone, wait for three minutes – the hotel is close to me – I call the reception.

I say: Excuse me, have you seen the guy from 320 come back?

Reception: No, I do not know.

I call our friend, who had entered the disco, and I say to him: Take me straight to the hotel.

I got in the car, and I thought I would immediately notify Gianluca, who was still at the restaurant and was to join us at the disco. I almost called him, but then I thought: What if Ignazio is in the hotel? Better to wait to sound the alarm.

I arrive at the hotel and ask again: Did you see the guy from 320 enter?

Reception: No, I do not think so, we have not seen anyone here.

At three-fifteen in the morning not many people pass by the entrance of a hotel, among those few people if Ignazio enters, you notice him, he is not one that goes unnoticed.

I say: Excuse me, could you give me the key to the room and let me in? At least I can see if he is asleep.

Reception: No, we cannot give it to you.

We are in the same group. You know very well he is my colleague.

Reception: No, unfortunately for privacy we cannot.

I begged the gentleman, I begged him, but he did not give me the key.

I go up, I go to Ignazio’s door with our friend, and we knock.

Igna’! Igna’! We shouted, beat and shouted, but no one answered.

In that chaos, however, from under the door we saw that the light was on. Ignazio is in the room!

I seemed to see him sleeping on the bed, or at least I hoped it, I hoped so much.

At that point, the doubt came to me, What if the room is really empty and he’s in some corner of Miami that felt bad? So, I took my friend and told him: Let’s go back to the disco street and check around it. But it’s not that we only made the disco area, no, we made almost all of Miami up and down to find Ignazio. But nothing! Three hours and no results. I had anguish that took my breath away.

At that point I had to warn the others, and I started with Gianluca.

Gianluca….

It was not until six o’clock. My heart stopped.

I suspected something had happened because I had waited for Ignazio and Piero at the disco, but they never arrived. I thought they changed their mind, perhaps they were tired or something. Never, however, to think that it was such a serious thing.

At that time, when Piero called me, I was in bed, recently, but was in bed.

I did not even think for a moment that Piero was joking. It was too serious, and Piero is not the kind to joke about such things.

I said only: I wait you below, I dressed and went down to the hotel lobby.

You cannot imagine what I thought in just a few minutes when I waited for him.

It was the first time in four years that we did not know where one of us was.

It was a, very, bad feeling!

Piero continues the story….

It was at that point that, together with Gianluca, we decided to wake Barbara.

Barbara, we cannot find Ignazio. I told her.

It was half past six in the morning. We had not heard from him for more than three hours.

Barbara says: A joke?

No, we cannot find him.

We only worried about Ignazio, but Barbara then had another problem to manage. That morning at 9:50 we had to fly to New York because the next day we had a concert at Radio City Music Hall. And not just any show, sold out, and all our parents were going to New York and to Washington, our lawyers had arrived, and all those who work with us. And Michele, of course, because this was the most important concert of the whole tour.

Piero tells Barbara: However, I tell her, from under the door you can see the light, maybe he’s asleep on the bed, only they won’t give us the key to the room.

First thing, Barbara gets up, gets dressed, and runs to open Ignazio’s door.

She basically threatens the one at the front desk, so she goes to room 320 with a bodyguard from the hotel and they open the room.

Ignazio was not there: my world collapsed there. My blood is frozen.

At that point Barbara calls Michele in New York. Michele, there’s a problem Ignazio cannot be found.

Michele: It’s a joke.

From there Michele mobilizes everyone. He calls all his friends in Miami, everyone. Meanwhile, Michele also had to understand whether or not to cancel the concert and how to cancel it. I could not put my head around it, my only fear, and my biggest nightmare was the fact that Ignazio was not there.

Barbara, in the meantime, calls Flavio, another friend of ours in Miami and he arrives with his motorbike. Let it be known that Barbara has a fear of motorcycles, she had never ridden in her life. She got on the motorbike and went to the police station to ask if they had arrested a boy in a green shirt and then she went to all the hospitals to see if some ambulance had brought in a guy with a green shirt.

We turned Miami upside down there.

What was I doing?

Gianluca continues the story….

Piero and I took turns at the hotel, watching all the taxis and we hoped that Ignazio would descend.

Piero interrupts…

Every taxi that arrived, we prayed to heaven and earth.

And where was Ignazio? Time for Ignazio to come back into the story…

The police woke me up the next morning on the lawn of South Beach’s main street, telling me that if I did not get up, they would have to take me to jail. At 9:50 on that September 25^th we had a flight to New York and, on the 27^th we had the most important concert of the tour at Radio City Music Hall. The concert was sold out for a few weeks. There were six thousand people.

Time to wake up and I realize that everything is gone, my cell phone, wallet, and jacket. They had stolen everything. What do I do? And above all, what time is it? Something told me it was late. So, I start running.

But where are you going? I told myself at a certain point. I stopped to see where I was. I was between the seventh and eighth, quite the opposite of the restaurant and our hotel that was on the nineteenth. I definitely had to hurry up. So, I start running again, but the problem remained to understand what time it was.

I stop and ask a gentleman, who answers me: It’s 9:50, man!

The first thought? The flight! In the sense of the plane … Then I start to run, but this time like a bolt in the Olympics, but I realize that the hotel is too far. A taxi, a taxi was needed.

I glanced down the road and one was passing on the opposite lane. I start running wildly without checking if any cars are coming. Fortunately, there was no one. This street in Miami is always busy but, at that precise moment no one passed. Do we want to call it ass? (Luck)

Anyway, I get the taxi. Driving was an African American woman and I’m asking her to take me to the hotel. In fact, I do not even know how I could remember the name of the hotel.

Piero interrupts….

It was already 9:30, the plane was already gone, and Ignazio was still not found.

I was desperate. I no longer knew who to pray to or what to think. They have kidnapped him, they will have killed him, they will be threatening him.

Barbara arrived back at the hotel from the hospital and the police station without news.

So now I’m going up, riding on the bike with Flavio. What do I do? This time I start going around the alleys of Miami. The nightclub was on the Sixteenth Street. The hotel was on the nineteenth, so three blocks away, it was close. I asked every bum I met: Excuse me, have you seen a boy with a green shirt?

A dollar, I heard a lot of times. And while I was shooting there, Gianluca was waiting in front of the hotel for all the taxis coming hoping to see Ignazio descend, while Barbara had been on the phone for so long that she no longer knew who to call.

Hope was already lost in New York.       

Ignazio returns to say….

When I arrived at the hotel, I saw Barbara and Gianluca sitting on a bench as if waiting for someone. Then I got out of the taxi and asked them: Excuse me, do you have any dollars to pay for the taxi? They both looked up together ….

Gianluca interrupts…

… I burst into tears; I started screaming. It was as if they had taken a weight off my shoulders that crushed me to the ground and prevented me from breathing.

Ignazio….

Barbara paid for the taxi and started to call Michele, who I later realized, in the midst of all that concern, also had to find a way to solve the problems that would have caused a possible cancellation of the concert in New York.

My mother, who was already there, had understood everything, because I did not answer the phone and she had news of what happened from Gaetano and Leonora, Piero’s parents and Gianluca’s mother.

Piero….

While I was riding on the Lincoln Road, with Flavio, my phone rings: it was half past ten.

Gianluca shrieked: He has arrived, he has arrived, he is here!

I scream from the bike to vent all the evil I had inside. I cried. Do you know when you run with the bike and you have all the tears? What’s this? And I punched Flavio, I gave punches from happiness.

We arrive at the hotel, and I see Ignazio in front of the reception with that blessed green jersey. He had gone out the night before with a blue jacket and they had stolen it, along with his wallet and cell phone.

What did I do? I called my mom because Ignazio was not well. I understood that they had given him something. My mother tells me to let him drink a lot of water and give him a spoonful of honey. And you see Ignazio lying on the bed and I with the spoon, you know when you give the syrup to your son? With the honey spoon to make him eat everything he could swallow.

Too sad and also hard to tell.

Ignazio….

The boys accompanied me to my room, they helped me take a shower because when I looked in the mirror, I realized that I was full of bruises and scratches on my face and body, some bumps here and there and I was also half lame.

The two of them together with Barbara had gone around Miami all night, from three thirty in the morning to ten, in taxis, motorbikes, between hospitals and various police departments to look for me, while I was sleeping in the fresh air on a green lawn.

That night they beat me with blows. They threw me right and left. But I had not gotten drunk, I had just accepted a drink that had been drugged without my noticing it. Do you know one thing? From that day on, if I go to a pub or a disco, I always ask for closed drinks, I have to open them myself.

My biggest rage of that night is I do not remember anything, as if they had cut the film of a camera roll and had it attached to a later piece. It’s not nice to not be able to remember.

Barbara, in the end, managed to move the flight, we left later and arrived at the hotel. Our parents were waiting outside, with shining eyes and the desire to hug us like never before. Shortly afterwards, my father arrived. He was stuck in London and, poor man, had to travel from London to New York without knowing if they had found me.

In the end it’s the result that matters. I can say that this experience made us grow a lot and made us want more good things for each other.

That concert at Radio City Music Hall was one of the most beautiful concerts we’ve ever done. We sang like never before maybe because we had just found out what it meant to lose everything in a moment.

During that concert Ignazio had a special message for the guys and everyone involved  with Il Volo.

So here we are at the end of the story. The guy’s got through the night because they were a family! Three brothers looking out for one another and a mother who would not give up until she found her missing sheep and returned him to the fold. Becoming a Family wasn’t easy for the guy’s but when they realized their own strength they knew they had come to a new reality in their lives. They knew they could depend on one another, and they had a mother to turn to in difficult moments.

So, I began this story by saying Christmas will be different this year.  Yes, Barbara is gone and the three have lost a mother and it will be very difficult to pass the holidays without her. But they have each other to lean on.

Very soon Ignazio will marry the beautiful Michelle Bertollini, and she will become a part of the Il Volo family and as each guy marries, the family will continue to grow! It’s the wheel of life! One gets off, one gets on and each one is a treasure!

For your listening pleasure the entire September 27, 2013 concert from Radio City Music Hall.

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

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)

Credits to the owners of photos and videos