Vittorio : The new voice of pop opera

The voice on the other line is as warm as morning sunshine.

"The Philippines is wonderful. I love it! My sister, a nun, told me about her community in Borongan (Samar). She said it’s so beautiful," Vittorio, or II Pavarottino (Little Pavarotti) in his native Italy, chirped.

On CD, the same voice is as smooth as silk as it glides over each of the 12 melodies carefully chosen for Vittorio’s debut album, In the Hands of Love (for MCA Music). It grabs you by the gut as it pleads irresistibly in Maria (theme from The Westside Story). It soars to heights of passion in All In Love is Fair. It caresses like a lover’s touch in Querida.

I could go on and on, but to do so would mean turning this piece into an album review and robbing Vittorio the man of the attention he deserves.

Vittorio is just like his pop opera songs: romantic, passionate, intense. Born in Rome but now shuttling back and forth between the ancient city and Los Angeles, Vittorio is as open about his life as a book raring to be read.

Yes, singing with Pussycat Doll’s Nicole Scherzinger in the track You Are My Miracle (from In the Hands of Love) was distracting, he admits. Part-Filipina Nicole made his heart go pitty-pat because "she’s so sexy!"

Beauty is something this 29-year-old romantic can’t have enough of. When a cousin sent him photos of pretty Filipinas, Vittorio was so taken aback he wants more, more, more.

"You are so beautiful," he gushes on the other line.

His next statement doesn’t come as a surprise: "I want to hold a show in the Philippines, probably with Nicole someday."

Traveling, after all, has become a lifestyle for Vittorio since this tenor with the lyrical voice hit it big. At 23, he was the youngest Italian tenor ever to sing at La Scala (for Bernstein’s West Side Story), and went on to perform Mozart, Verdi and Roussini throughout Europe, Japan and the US.

Vittorio so impressed American Idol judge Simon Cowell he wanted the young tenor to sign up with II Divo.

Vittorio said, no thanks. He’d rather establish himself as a solo artist first. It was a decision he will never regret.

In the Hands of Love was one of the highest classical chart debuts ever for a new artist in the UK. It landed Vittorio in the Top 10 charts, alongside Andrea Bocelli. And it has established Vittoiro as a crossover artist to reckon with.

The promise Luciano Pavarotti first glimpsed when he performed Tosca with the then 12-year-old Vittorio at the Rome Opera House has come true.

"He (Pavarotti) told me that I have to sing this and that. He taught me strategy. And that’s very important," reveals Vittorio.

Figures why Vittorio wears the title II Pavarottino like a crown of diadems.

It’s such a great name they gave me," Vittorio gushes. "It puts me on the edge." But don’t get him wrong. Vittorio basks in the glow the title gives him. It’s "pressure of the positive kind," he assures you.

That, and the itch to spread his wings and test the limits of his talent has urged Vittorio try something different. He decided to cross over from plain opera to pop and opera, or pop opera. And the result has amazed Vittorio himself.

"I sang with a microphone for the first time," he looks back. He marvels at how doing so makes him to widen his horizon, to "sing to more people and share my world with them."

For this, he chose to do away with his family name (Grigolo) the better to divorce himself from the pure opera image.

He won’t stop there. Vittorio is to go out of the box some more. As if collaborating with Stevie Wonder (in all In Love is Fair) and Keane (in Bedshaped) in In the Hands of Love is not enough, Vittorio wants to team up with other artists known for other music genres like rapper 50 Cent.

"Then I’ll be known as a `poperapper," he says.

The man is not only warm, he’s witty as well.