Most peo­ple are famil­iar with the 1996 col­lab­o­ra­tion between Andrea Bocel­li and Sarah Bright­man, Time to Say Good­bye, since it was a world­wide smash, sell­ing over 12 mil­lion copies and mak­ing it one of the best-sell­ing sin­gles of all time. How­ev­er, it was the year before, in 1995, that Andrea Bocel­li first per­formed this sump­tu­ous neo-clas­si­cal song in its orig­i­nal Ital­ian form, as a solo piece: Con Te Par­tirò.

The song was writ­ten spe­cial­ly for Bocel­li by Francesco Sar­tori and Lucio Quar­an­tot­to, and appeared on his sec­ond album. Bocel­li had already had his big break a few years ear­li­er in 1992 when Luciano Pavarot­ti heard a demo tape of Bocel­li singing Mis­erere, a song intend­ed for Pavarot­ti (and co-writ­ten by U2’s Bono of all peo­ple). Pavarot­ti was impressed and in the end, he and Bocel­li record­ed it togeth­er. That song became a world­wide hit and cat­a­pult­ed Bocel­li into the lime­light. At Italy’s San­re­mo Music Fes­ti­val in 1994 he won hon­ours in the new­com­ers’ cat­e­go­ry, and suc­cess was cement­ed.

In the fol­low­ing year, Bocel­li appeared at San­re­mo again. Watch him here, per­form­ing his sig­na­ture piece, Con Te Par­tirò. His hon­eyed voice and dis­tinc­tive tim­bre, togeth­er with the beau­ti­ful melody and rich orches­tra­tion, pro­duced a mas­ter­piece of emo­tion­al strength. Stu­pen­dous.