BOCELLI: IT ALL BEGINS WITH A LETTER

Camerino’s cloistered nuns put pen to paper for their earthquake-damaged town. The music school has lost its home. Through someone close to the Bocelli family, the letter reaches Laura Biancalani, president of the tenor’s foundation. The Franco Corelli Music Academy opens on 1 October 2020.

A greeting before the interviews

The opening account preserves a lovely detail. Michele Arcangelo Tarantino is putting away wheelbarrows and tools after working on the lawn until the last moment. Andrea Bocelli and his wife Veronica Berti stop to greet him before interviews and dignitaries. A ceremony also belongs to the hands that made it possible.

Two schools before it

The Andrea Bocelli Foundation begins in July 2011. After the 2016 earthquake, it works in the Marche region, including Sarnano, where it builds the new Giacomo Leopardi school with another foundation. It opens on 2 May 2018.

Construction accounts offer concrete images: temporary classrooms, over a hundred pupils visiting the site, forty centimetres of roof snow cleared to keep work going. This is part of returning to class, too.

Muccia’s De Amicis school opens on 26 June 2019. There is a piano in the dining hall!

Music finds a home again

The Camerino letter leads to meetings with the mayor, university and bishop. Named after tenor Franco Corelli, Bocelli’s teacher and friend, the academy now has dedicated classrooms and its own auditorium.

A letter, a warmly greeted worker, pupils watching a building grow. Bocelli’s name makes a shared reconstruction visible. Its next chapter lives in days of studying and playing music again.