Some stories just write themselves and the author stands by with pen in hand, looks down at the paper and says yes, yes that’s exactly what I wanted to say! And you can’t even remember writing it but it’s there and it’s so spot on! Life writes its own stories!  Certainly, life wrote this one about three teenage boys. Teenagers! Think of your kid outside playing basketball or soccer. Could you imagine that he would walk off the court and into the limelight? I’m thinking your fondest hope would be that he would clean up his room.

How do you explain three amazing voices coming together on the same stage, at the same time? I have only one explanation. La Forza del Destino! It was fate! It was a plan! It was God’s plan!

Watching the guys recording these last few weeks brought back fond memories of the beginning. Before Sanremo, before Barbara Streisand, before Notte Magica! In the real beginning….

In the beginning there were three guys named Piero, Ignazio and Gianluca. They were ordinary guys!

Piero loved his motorbike! “When I arrived at the roundabout in the center of the city, voom, I did a wheelie with the motorbike.”

Ignazio loved to play soccer. “My main project when I went to school was to get home and spend the afternoon playing football.”

Gianluca, also, loved to play soccer! “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.”

So, yes, they were ordinary kids but, they all had something special. They had a special gift from God. Their voice!

What was it that made them different? What was it about this baritone and two tenors that was different from other tenors or baritones? First and foremost, the delivery of these three voices was equal. The crispness and clarity in each voice was defined. They were alike but they were different. They were balanced! Roberto Cenci recognized these exceptional qualities and understood that they could blend into one beautiful voice so, he decided to put the three voices together. The result was they were an immediate sensation and they caused important people in the industry to stop and listen!

Each one separately was captivating, together, they were a gift that God gave to humanity!

The first meeting!

We have to keep in mind that in the beginning the guys were underage so any negotiations and plans for their future was handled by their parents. It was only after the parents first meeting with among others, Michele Torpedine, that the guys were informed that plans were being made for them. After this meeting the parents met again a month later and signed a contract for the guys to record with Universal.

I think Piero put it best when he said, “The day before, I went to my uncle’s workshop and the next day I signed a millionaire contract with an American label.”

The behind-the-scenes video of the guys recording “Tous les visages de l’amour” and, the recent recording of the Ennio Morricone album inspired me to write this article.

Let’s start by listening to Piero talk about their first meeting with Michele Torpedine.

“The day began well, calm, and quiet. I was having lunch at the hotel restaurant and a gentleman with a sand-colored raincoat and graying hair arrived. I heard footsteps behind me and a ‘Hello, Piero’ with this deep voice. You recognize Michele’s voice anywhere. You know, when I speak of that meeting, it reminds me of things I’ve seen in an American movie. It was from this that we started, three fifteen-sixteen-year-old idiots, and Torpedine, who had already become an icon for me. So, he sits with us and we start talking. After lunch, we got ready for rehearsal.

And, so, it begins!

Being teenagers there was always going to be some antics going on.

Gianluca recalls, “We were three children at the park playing. Ignazio, to name one, poured Coca-Cola on the floor in the dressing room and it ended up on Michele’s jacket. Michele turns and says, “Barbara look,” I still remember it, with a face looking like “Oh my God!”

Piero recalls, “And after the Coca-Cola there were plums. Our first meeting with Michele ends with plums flying from one dressing room to the other and Michele comes out with white hair, indeed no, because he already had white hair. No, he comes out with straight hair saying, ‘Are you three, crazy?’

In practice we threw plums from the door of our dressing room, to the one next to us. We had a mess that night.

What has changed from that day to today? Nothing. On tour, in the television broadcast rooms and sometimes even in the recording room, one of our favorite activities is the fruit launch. The best are the grapes (but we also use cherries). Ignazio throws them from a distance and, I have to take it on the fly and catch it in my mouth. It doesn’t matter if the Pope or Bono is in the dressing room next to us, it doesn’t impress us.”

Listen to what the guys had to say about the beginning of their career.

Piero: “At the beginning it was really a dream, even if I do not like repeating it, because you find yourself traveling the world and doing it, from one day to the next. However, I repeat, always without realizing the importance of the thing, without fully understanding what was happening.”

Ignazio: “So, a dream that Piero, in the clouds, has forgotten to say is the most important thing: it was the first time that Italian singers signed a contract directly with an American record company. But it was not that we signed the contract, the big thing was done, but it had yet to start!”

Gianluca: “Piero forgot to mention that ours was the first contract signed directly by Italian singers with an American label, but Ignazio forgot to mention that the first recording studio in which we entered all three together for our great adventure was called the Forum and it was in Rome.”