Music for Hope: From the Duomo di Milano - EP

On Easter Sunday 2020, as the world continued to isolate itself from COVID-19, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli offered up a musical prayer from a deserted Milan Cathedral. His beautiful selection of liturgical arias, accompanied by cathedral organist Emanuele Vianelli, was streamed live around the world, bringing solace to millions in this difficult, disconcerting time. Bocelli’s recital can now be heard here—beginning with César Franck’s celebrated “Panis Angelicus” and Gounod’s Bach-inspired “Ave Maria.” He continues with “Sancta Maria,” an arrangement of Mascagni’s Intermezzo from the opera Cavalleria rusticana, followed by a moment of sunny optimism: the Domine Deus from Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. Bocelli ends with a breathtaking performance of “Amazing Grace” sung in front of the cathedral, its opening bars unaccompanied before the climactic addition of prerecorded orchestra and choir. “I will cherish the emotion of this unprecedented and profound experience of this Holy Easter,” says Bocelli, “which this emergency has made painful, but at the same time even more fruitful, one that will stay among my dearest memories of all time.”