The great British public can’t stop saying ‘Si” to the Tuscan tenor.

Just weeks after he serenaded the nation at the Royal Wedding of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank with a stunning Panis Angelicus, he is about to wow crowds this weekend at London’s O2 Arena. with new tour dates already announced for 2019.

Bocelli’s sixteenth studio album, Si, is selling like hot cakes this week and includes duets with Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa and Josh Groban.

However, it is his 1996 collaboration with Sarah Brightman that remains his defining moment. The fact that much of it is sung in Italian may be a blessing, though, especially if it all turns out to be about death…

When Andrea Bocelli released a special 20th Anniversary Edition of the album Romanza in 2016 he explained what it had meant to him.

He said: “Twenty years, a generation, the time it takes to conceive a son and raise him to become a man. And yet Romanza seems not to shy away from the passing of time, to the point where in the tracks on the album I recognise, with a thrill and at times deep emotion, the clear reflection of what I was, but also of what I am, the adventure of my life at the time but also at this very moment. It has become the soundtrack of so many lives.”

The sentiments echo the beautiful Con Te Partiro although the actual translation of the chorus makes no sense at all.

TIME TO SAY GOOBYE CHORUS:

Time to say goodbye, to countries I never saw and shared with you,

Now, yes, I shall experience them.

I’ll go with you, on ships across seas which, I know, no, no, exist no longer.

It’s time to say goodbye.

It seems they’re saying goodbye to places they’ve never actually been to and heading off on ships over seas which no longer exist?

It’s not clear how they’ll manage that, unless the power of song carries them there.

It may be time to say goodbye to logic.

Then again, the song is also very popular at funerals, so maybe they are talking metaphorically about travelling beyond this life?

ANDREA BOCELLI’S NEW ALBUM SI IS OUT NOW