Andrea Bocelli to Follow Record-Breaking Easter Livestream With Christmas Concert
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
After creating the biggest musical moment of the pandemic year with his record-breaking Easter Sunday livestream, Andrea Bocelli will be staying in a holiday streaming spirit with a followup event, “Believe in Christmas.” The singer will perform from the Teatro Regio di Parma opera house in Italy on December 12, with different streaming kickoff times staggered to prime time in regions around the world.
The staggered start times aren’t the only thing different about the Christmas webcast than the one on Easter. “Believe in Christmas” is being offered as a pay-per-view, so it won’t approach the mammoth numbers that the Easter “Music for Hope” performance from the Duomo cathedral in Milan did. That webcast reached 3 million concurrent viewers on YouTube and was seen 28 million times within 24 hours of its initial live airing.
One more difference: “Believe in Christmas” “will not be available on-demand after it has taken place,” an announcement said, “and with no audience in attendance, the only way to watch it will be to purchase tickets to the livestream broadcast.”
In the U.S., the concert will stream at 8 p.m. in both east and west coast time zones. The Central Time stream will be concurrent with the Pacific Time broadcast, at 10 p.m. CT. Tickets go on sale Nov. 20 through Ticketmaster; pricing has not yet been revealed.
The Christmas performance looks to be more elaborate than the stark staging of Bocelli’s Easter performance, with Franco Dragone, of Cirque Du Soleil fame, signed on as creative director.
The announcement arrived simultaneously with the release Friday of Bocelli’s new album, “Believe” — which, despite the similarity of its name to that of the upcoming webcast, is not a Christmas album — and a new music video for a duet between the singer and Alison Krauss on “Amazing Grace,” which you can watch below. Bocelli also duets on the album with Cecilia Bartoli and includes a previously unreleased collaboration with the late Ennio Morricone. The set opens with Bocelli’s interpretation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and includes the theme from the recent film “Fatima.”
More from Variety
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
