In September 1994, music history witnessed a meeting of generations — two of the greatest tenor voices ever to grace the stage joined together for a song born of love and longing.
The setting was Modena, Italy, where Luciano Pavarotti hosted his second star-studded charity gala, Pavarotti & Friends. Among the special guests stood a rising star — 36-year-old Andrea Bocelli — handpicked by Pavarotti himself, who was nearly a quarter-century older. Their duet, Notte ‘e piscatore (“The Night of the Fisherman”), had been written especially for them by composer Maurizio Morante earlier that same year.
It was a perfect pairing: Bocelli’s tender lyricism intertwined with Pavarotti’s commanding strength, the young tenor’s emotion meeting the master’s thunder. The song — a lament of love lost, set against the quiet ache of the sea — seemed to carry that unspoken beauty Morgan Freeman’s character described in The Shawshank Redemption: “I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words.”
Their duet would live on in the Pavarotti & Friends album the following year, marking not just a musical moment but the deep beginning of a friendship and mentorship. Bocelli would go on to perform at three of Pavarotti’s charity concerts — and later, with both grief and grace, sing at the maestro’s memorial gala after his passing in 2007.
Reflecting years later, Bocelli told The Telegraph: “Pavarotti loved me. He called me to sing at his wedding — and his wife called me again for his funeral.”
Their story had begun even earlier, in 1992, when Italian rock legend Zucchero held auditions for his song Miserere — originally meant for Pavarotti. It was Bocelli’s voice on the demo that changed everything. After hearing it, Pavarotti smiled and told Zucchero, “You don’t need me to sing this. Let Andrea sing Miserere with you — there is no one finer.”
And so they did — three voices, one legacy, and a moment that bridged past and future in song.
