Tragic Details About Andrea Bocelli

Andrea Bocelli is one of the most accomplished singers of all time, and an indisputable legend when it comes to classical music. The Italian tenor has sold over 90 million albums to date and generated more than 16 billion streams for his music. He has six Grammy award nominations, six Latin Grammy Award nominations, a Golden Globe, seven Classical BRITs, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Andrea Bocelli even appeared on "The Bold and the Beautiful" for their on-location shoot in Rome in 2023. Furthermore, the singer also has a law degree. Suffice it to say, Bocelli has lived a life filled with opportunities and success. However, he's also had his fair share of tragedy, starting with the eye disease with which he was born.

It's worth noting that Bocelli himself has a wonderful outlook on life, centering on the healing power of music and highlighting the highs over the lows. "Life has been good to me. I've received so much more than I have been able to give back so far. All the same, I can't deny that I have had difficult times, like everyone else," he said in an interview with The Talks. "When my father died, for example, or during a difficult period when I couldn't spend as much time with my children as I wanted ... It was a painful situation, and as a result I risked losing my enthusiasm for my career. But even in that case, music was an important consolation." Here we take a look at tragic details about Andrea Bocelli's life, with an eye toward his perseverance.

Andrea Bocelli's medical issues began before birth, when doctors noticed abnormalities during early tests. Doctors even advised Bocelli's parents to abort him, with the warning that he would be born with a disability and struggle to live a satisfactory life. This is often cited as the origin for Bocelli's anti-abortion beliefs, about which he has been very vocal over the years. Clearly, Bocelli's parents did not follow directives and, equally clearly, Bocelli has exceeded expectations in many ways.

Bocelli's poor eyesight was apparent at birth, and he was quickly diagnosed with congenital glaucoma, a disease that damages the eye's optic nerve and significantly impairs vision. Kids with this disease often have issues with high pressure inside the eyes (ocular hypertension), fluid buildup due to improper drainage, and structural changes to the eye due to these problems. For Bocelli, this ailment led to many surgeries during those early years. "My brother Andrea, aged 3½, due to congenital glaucoma, had been operated on 13 times in Turin," explained Alberto Bocelli, the tenor's brother, in the documentary "Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe." "It was torture," he added.

To help him cope with his disability, Bocelli's mother introduced him to the healing power of music. "When I was 5, my mother discovered that the only way to comfort me with my glaucoma was to play classical music on the record player," Bocelli told The Telegraph in 2010. He started taking piano lessons at 6 years of age, followed by flute and saxophone.

Andrea Bocelli may have been born with severe vision impairment, but he was not fully blind as a young child. "As a child, I was considered extremely short-sighted. I could see everything but only from up close," Bocelli said in his documentary, "Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe." "I remember extremely well the world I saw. Colors, everything. How could I forget those memories?" Because of Bocelli's limited eyesight, no mainstream school would take him on as a student. His family had no choice but to send him away to a special school for the visually impaired, which meant he had to leave home by age 7. "He only came home on holidays and during the school year, we would visit him once a month," said Andrea's brother Alberto Bocelli, in the documentary.

Though sending such a young kid away to school was hard, Bocelli's parents did so out of necessity. Boarding school is where the tenor learned many necessary skills, and he seems to be thankful for the opportunity to attend. "It was thanks to my parents who, though suffering from our separation, decided to send me to a boarding school far from home, so that with learning how to read, write and count, I would be able to cope with life in the best way possible," he explained in an interview with Ability Magazine. "Even my grandmother and my brother learned how to encode Braille just to write to each other and keep in touch during the long months when school kept us apart."

Though boarding school taught Andrea Bocelli many important skills, it was also the scene of one of his greatest life tragedies. The school was where, at age 12, Bocelli lost what little was left of his eyesight, after a sports accident led to a brain hemorrhage. "As a child I was very lively and uncontrollable, I loved playing football and one day during a match, I was hit violently in the face with a ball on my right eye, the only one which I could see light and colour with," he explained to The Telegraph in 2010.

In his documentary, "Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe," the tenor further discussed the incident, including his confusion over one key thing: the position coaches had him play. "I was the goalkeeper. No idea why, as I had never been the goalie before," Bocelli remembered. "And I never would be goalie again. A ball hit me right in the face. From that blow, a hemorrhage ... and the rest is history."

After that fateful blow to the head, doctors tried everything they could to help Bocelli regain his sight. "The doctors tried to cure me with various operations and they even used leeches but there was nothing that could be done," the singer told The Telegraph. When even leeches failed, doctors were forced to accept the fact that Bocelli would never see again. The tenor, for his part, adapted relatively quickly. He continued to excel in music and later went on to study law at the University of Pisa.

It is a sad fact of life that all humans will experience loss and grief at some point, provided they themselves live long enough to outlast their loved ones. But how many people have to experience a family member's death, then go out on a stage and perform for one of the most important figures in the world? Not many, that's for sure! This was the situation, however, when Andrea Bocelli's father, Alessandro Bocelli, died suddenly in May 2000, mere hours before the tenor was set to sing for Pope John Paul II.

The concert was a big deal — a huge outdoor event in Rome, Italy, called the Great Jubilee Concert for a Debt-Free World, with the goal of raising money for the world's most impoverished countries. Alongside Bocelli, the Eurythmics and Lou Reed were also slated to perform for the Head of the Roman Catholic Church and half a million fans. So, when he got word of his father's untimely passing, Bocelli had a tough decision to make. He decided to cancel the concert, but a heartfelt plea from his mother made him reconsider. She felt his father would have wanted him to perform, and so Bocelli hopped on a plane to kiss the Pope's ring and give a moving performance of Ave Maria and other religious songs.

A couple of months later, Bocelli held a special New York City concert to honor his father and raise funds for pancreatic cancer, the disease he died from. Tickets were $500.

Few singers go their whole careers without at least some vocal complications, but some suffer more than others — for example, Adele was forced to cancel shows due to lingering health concerns. Andrea Bocelli is one of those performers whose voice has not held up as well as ideal, and this has led to both subpar critic reviews for his concerts as well as cancelled performances. In 2023, Bocelli was forced to cancel shows in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Boston, Massachusetts, due to "health challenges" which were never fully explicated.

"The voice is a gift that I have received, it is an instrument that has been entrusted to me: I have always considered it my precise duty — and an honor, and a grace — to be able to share it with those who want to listen to it. For this reason, as long as I am given the strength, I will continue to travel and sing," Bocelli said in a statement (via Facebook). "For this reason, especially on tour, I preserve it with the rigor of an athlete, aware of the privilege and responsibility that I perceive, respecting the public first and foremost, but also the large quantity of people and professionalism that are involved."

In the statement, Bocelli claimed he rarely cancelled performances, but he notably cancelled a big gig at the Metropolitan Opera House a handful of years prior, in April 2020, citing similarly vague health issues. For many years, classic musical critics have also called out the inconsistency of Bocelli's vocal performances.

Though the music he performs is calming, Andrea Bocelli himself appears to have a bit of a testiness to him. Take, for example, his 2022 legal battle with a jet company, which started because Bocelli was unhappy with having a noisier airplane than expected. "He is also not a very keen flyer, as he has fear of flying and can feel anxiety related to safety issues during air travel," said the suit (via Boston.com). "In particular, he is sensitive to the elevated noise that an older airplane tends to make in flight, with such elevated noise causing him more anxiety."

Bocelli filed the lawsuit in September 2022, alleging that Private Jet Services, a New Hampshire air charter firm specializing in luxury jet service, violated the terms of their contract during a portion of Bocelli's U.S. tour the year prior. In addition to the planes being "noisier" than anticipated, the tenor was upset that a crew member announced they could expect a bumpy landing on a flight from California to Cleveland. They were told not to make any announcements about turbulence to avoid causing Bocelli undue anxiety.

Bocelli sued for the $569,800 he paid for 15 flights, alternative travel arrangements, lawyers' fees, and damages. The jet company filed a countersuit, claiming the singer was the one who cancelled numerous flights because he was unhappy with "the weather and help" and refuting the majority of his other claims. With no public updates, it is unclear if the nasty court battle is ongoing.

Andrea Bocelli's legal issues do not end with his dispute with Private Jet Services. The famed singer has also had problems with his former management company, Quest Management. Though many details about the situation have not been made public, it has been reported that Quest Management filed a High Court action against Bocelli in the United Kingdom where they are based. Per the Daily Mail, Bocelli was managed by Quest for "many years" and had an ongoing agreement with the star.

The court documents state that an agreement from 2018 was extended in March 2022 and March 2023, and it continued until Bocelli's wife Veronica Berti — who is also his manager — sent a termination email in April 2025. Quest is seeking "unlimited damages" from Bocelli, claiming the "wrongful purported termination" has caused "very substantial loss and damage." Bocelli — who is so in-demand that he even sang at Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker's wedding — has not publicly commented on the matter. 

Bocelli's new management deal was announced shortly after Berti sent the termination email. In early May 2025, the singer signed a five-year global deal with AEG Presents, effective January 2026.

Fake news is all over the Internet and it's hard for a current-day celebrity to totally escape its wraths. Nonetheless, some stars tend to be frequent targets of widespread falsities, and Andrea Bocelli falls into this boat. After Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race, for example, it was falsely reported that Bocelli cancelled tour dates in the city.

The tenor and his wife have most frequently been targeted by fake news accounts on Facebook. For instance, there have been many false reports about Bocelli's wife Veronica Berti having some sort of illness. "Legendary tenor Andrea Bocelli and his family are dealing with heartbreaking news about his wife — and the emotional reaction from his entire orchestra and touring crew has left fans around the world completely stunned," read one headline on Facebook from December 2025. Berti has no known illness.

The very same day as that Berti health post was made, another Facebook account posted the following: "Emotional update: Andrea Bocelli's wife, Veronica Berti, has shared a heartfelt message about his current health condition, expressing her deep gratitude to fans for their immense love and support during this difficult time. She revealed that Andrea Bocelli was rushed to hospital after a sudden and unexpected medical emergency." Bocelli was not rushed to the hospital, and the story is but one of many circulating about his health. A post from June 2025, from yet another Facebook account, even said Berti was tearfully saying goodbye to her husband due to an undisclosed health diagnosis.