Where should we draw a line - The Bocelli "phenomenon"

I accept to kinds of opera singers: those who have a beautiful voice, even if their interpretation skills are poor (Pavarotti is the most famous example) or those that posses a special skill of making the musical message transparent for everybody. Still the voice should have a good quality but it's not mandatory to be beautiful (Callas or Gobbi are good examples). Anything else in unsatisfactory.

However, nowadays I am more and more annoyed by a false phenomenon and my problem is that he is considered based on some recordings a great opera singer. And he is not. I have been in touch with Andrea Bocelli ever since his entrance in the public arena couple of good years ago. He was promoted by a show at one of Italian TV's dedicated to the descovery and promotion of young, unknown yet great talents. In that context the story of the guy that can't see but has his voice and his songs to feed his brain was touching and gave birth to compasion. After a while though the same singer appeared more and more poignant in the musical life of the world, culminating with his "one of kind" redemption of some operatic repertoire. And that's where I thought that commercialism was going to far.

Although for light salon canzonettas he is probably an above average singer he is by no means an opera singer. Anything that requires a little effort from a voice and interpretation is over his head. He has a limited voice, full of problems, a timber that is nice to hear just for a very short part of his register and technical problems are always the matter of the day. On the other hand the ways he sings shows clearly that he has no intellectual power to express the drama of the character he is trying to sing. That's why I think that just because of his success in a certain target population, traditionally the target group for romances and canzonettas, and the very "publicity generating" personal story his agents and himself shouldn't go so far as to the claim to be an opera singer. Because he is not and he can't be.

So in case that you think of spending on his recordings with opera music, spare the effort and the money and go with the "real things" that are more than enough out there to satisfy any taste. Andrea Bocelli is no opera singer and that's that.