Now that the  2013 “We Are Love” Tour is over both in the U.S. and Latin America, here is my review of the concert season. Gianluca, Piero and Ignazio are the best singers in the world and are more handsome than anyone else on the planet.  Now for a few more details…here’s our real music man, Myron Heaton.

~Marie

The music, tour set-up and itinerary, and the guys.

MUSIC

I have always felt that the repertoire they choose is excellent and as I look back over the program from this tour having seen the concert close to four times I feel that is true way more than ever. It was nice (and smart) to bring some of the songs from the last tour back again and add to the songs from this year’s “We Are Love” album. The concert was well balanced in terms of texture and tempo of the music ( fast / slow / fast and serious / lighter / serious ) . The solos were spaced out very nicely except for one place: Gianluca’s solo “En Aranjuez Con Tu Amor” should have been followed by something other than “Beautiful Day” – something that starts with one of the other boys as lead singer. It is just vocal pacing that I am thinking of. But “Beautiful Day” is a great song to lead into intermission. I would have put “Il Canto” in the first half of the concert and not the second half – again for pacing. I also felt that even though “Questo Amore” is very nice song, it is not an opening number. “Il Mondo” is a great opening number as “Torna a Surriento” – Surrender “ is a great finale. Using the a capella version of one verse of “Smile” as the final encore was a stroke of genius ! Wonderful! Always sent chills up and down everyone’s back.

Songs left out of the tour: “ Lion King”- ended up being overdone prior to tour. “Cosi”- – never quite worked well and the pairing did not work well. “Bring you to my senses” – this turned out to be a regret for the guys. After the tour was going a few days they wished they would have kept that in the tour program rather than “Angel”. All due to the situation in Miami back in March. Too bad. It is a nice song with just the boys singing and they liked singing it. Hope we hear it in the future.

My personal favorites from the new crop of music: We Are Love (great theme song); Luna Nascosta; Il Canto; Surrender-Torna A Surriento. It is hard to stop, there are so many that I like. Older favorites: Smile and Tous Les Visages de l’Amour.

TOUR SET-UP

In one of my comments on the site I said that it was too short and too long. It was too long from the standpoint that there were too many concerts too close together allowing for too little rest of the voices and the body. They were forced to put in some unplanned rest time around Panama because voices were starting to go bad. That is very scary when you are a singer on tour. They had to move the Panama concert to give them space to get health back. 50 concerts in 2 ½ months is too many concerts in too close an order makes it feel to the singer like it is going on forever. You can also say that if you need to do all those concerts than stretch the tour out to four months.

This would allow time for my other pet peave: Not enough places in the USA. The whole midwest was left out except for Chicago and now four songs in Minneapolis. Nothing in Texas where they had four sites last time (pardon my repeating myself) nothing in Las Vegas ? !

My suggested tour would have lasted four to five months and had two week-long breaks in the 1/3 way point and the 2/3 way point. Maybe two-week break before Latin American half.

I know what you might be saying: too many concerts period . My take on that is too many concerts in too short a time. This is their profession and like other professional singers they do about 70 to 100 concerts a year. A revised tour would have had those 50 concerts plus two or three midwest cities plus Vegas and Texas bringing the Il Volo total to about 60 concerts over a four-month period. This year Salena Gomez has 76 concerts but stretched out more. Justin Bieber has over 130 concerts (although he has cancelled some of these) spread out over 8 months. With the Australian / Asia tour next spring and a return to Europe I am not sure on the numbers there. I just hope we are kept in the know.

OUR BOYS – OUR MEN

These guys are all legal adults and did not need to bring parents along. But they did anyway. Very wise. Helped to keep them grounded. Throughout the tour people like me were expressing concern about their voices being over-worked. But we need to know that they were concerned also and their parents also and their managers were concerned as well. They did have pretty good care during the whole tour. The fact that the tour was too cramped was a little bit out of their hands.

Our guys always sang as a true “professional” is supposed to. They treated each concert as though it was the first – with care and quality. They treated each concert like a classical concert rather than a pop concert. That is not the case with a lot of singers these days.

After spending the summer and fall reading about Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber and their silly actions, I was so proud of the way our guys conducted themselves on this tour. Magnificent young men !!! You did not see stories of our guys doing drugs; smashing cars; going to brothels; getting arrested; treating audience like cattle, etc. etc.

I tell you that we Il Volo fans are lucky that this is the group to which we are attracted. The best of everything: best music; best voices to sing that music with; THE nicest guys – period. God was having a very fine day when each of these boys was born !