ALBERTO: Andrea was diagnosed with congenital glaucoma when he was nine months
old, so for the first few years of his life my parents took him to doctors
and hospitals to undergo tests and operations. Glaucoma is a progressive
condition of the eye and they weren’t sure how quickly or slowly his sight
would deteriorate. I guess they just did everything they could. But when he
was about three my parents discovered something else about Andrea. On this
occasion, he was staying at a hospital in Turin, and my mother was finding
it difficult to stop him crying. Then she noticed he’d suddenly stop, and
she realised this happened when he put his head to the wall. She was
intrigued and put her head to the wall too.
And it was then she discovered he was actually listening to music. It was
coming from the room next door. So of course my mother went into this other
room, and there, sitting on a bed, was a Russian man listening to opera
music.
My parents were amazed by this and when they got home they bought a gramophone
and records by some of the great opera singers, and they would play these
for him and, sure enough, his spirits would always lift. Soon he would know
these songs off by heart. You could say from that hospital bed Andrea’s
passion for opera music was born.
I came along when Andrea was about three, by which point he was an extremely
lively child and very much the centre of attention. In fact, my parents were
so worried he might get jealous of the attention being lavished on me that
they actually kept me upstairs a lot of the time. But this didn’t fool
Andrea, and he ended up saying to everyone: “Where is the One Upstairs?” I
think he thought that was actually my name.
When Andrea was eight he went off to a special boarding school in Reggio
Emilia for children who were blind and partially sighted. He was there for
about six years, and that was where he learnt Braille. Once he could do that
he started writing letters to us. By then I was older and missing him a
great deal; I realised that if I could learn Braille too, I could keep in
contact with him. That’s what I did. Every day I’d sit down with my
grandmother, who lived with us, and we’d learn it together. I probably knew
Braille before I knew my school work.
Andrea would write to us once or twice a week, and it would be left to me and
my grandmother to read his letters to the rest of the family. As a small boy
I was very proud of this — it made me feel I had an important role to play.
What makes me laugh now is that Andrea would begin all his letters with the
same thing: “Dear family, I am well. I hope you are well.” After a while my
father knew this was coming, so he would say to me: “Alberto, start from the
fourth line!”
When Andrea came home for weekends and holidays, we’d get up to all sorts. He
was far more outgoing than me. Whereas I was cautious, he was fearless — a
real risk-taker. He loved bikes, but with his eyesight deteriorating there
was always the worry of an accident. Our father had this brilliant idea of
buying us a tandem so we could cycle together. But Andrea would want to sit
at the front, with me behind. If I saw an obstacle coming, I’d have to use
my body to get him to steer us away. Our worried father would be watching us
thinking that instead of having one son at risk, he now had two.
Andrea was definitely the one who’d get his way over things. We had this
airgun, and we’d squabble over who’d play with it first. More often than not
I’d let him. My mother didn’t like me being so submissive towards him, and
one day she got so fed up with telling him to share the gun she got hold of
it, broke it in half, and gave one half to him and one half to me. We never
argued again.
By the time we were doing our degrees we saw a lot less of each other. Andrea
had gone off to Pisa to study law, and then I went off to Pisa and later
Florence to study architecture. But we’d still come home at weekends, and as
we shared a bedroom we’d often stay up chatting all night. I would tell him
about Le Corbusier and he’d tell me about Rachmaninov. Whatever Andrea was
doing, his passion for music never left him, and it was while studying that
he started singing in bars and restaurants.
Andrea is a singer but his roots are still embedded in his family’s
traditions, in the land, the vineyards, the people. These two strands of his
life are intertwined. And as his brother, what’s been wonderful is that for
the past 10 years I’ve been working with him. So we’ve been able to
re-establish that close bond we had as little boys.
ANDREA: We grew up in a stone house in the countryside, surrounded by
farms and vineyards. It was a typical Tuscan upbringing, with a lot of
respect for the land, its produce and its local traditions. My father’s
parents lived with us, so Alberto and I were very much aware of our own
family past. Our ancestors had lived in the same place for over a hundred
years.
Alberto wasn’t very old when I went away to boarding school — I was about
eight and he was about five. I was away for six years, but I’d still come
back at weekends and during the holidays. And when I did, Alberto would
always be there, waiting anxiously at the door. He’d be so excited to see
me. And he’d have prepared lots of things for us to do — games, new
discoveries. We’d go off on adventures, or we’d play football or ride around
on our bikes.
I was the eldest, but Alberto was the responsible one. I was a daredevil. I
loved danger and doing crazy things. Even when I lost my sight I was exactly
the same — I would have had to change my brain to become different from what
I was. I loved riding bikes and horse-riding. I was eight when I started
having lessons, and when my father bought me my own horse I couldn’t wait to
go off on my own. But this horse turned out to be rather docile — far too
well behaved for me. My father was worried about me falling off but I wasn’t
worried at all. Sometimes I’d go and ride a neighbour’s horse because it was
more challenging.
Our family owned vineyards — they still do today. In the cellar there are
bottles from 1928, the year our father was born, and from 1958, when I was
born, and 1961, when Alberto was born. All great vintages! I remember
harvest times when we were young. Everyone would come to help, and in the
evening we’d sit and eat together — sometimes there would be as many as 50
or 60 people. By the end of the evening, everyone would be drinking wine and
singing all the traditional songs. And of course I loved singing. It was
something I gravitated towards from a very young age, particularly the great
Italian opera singers like Caruso. At harvest time, I’d want to get up and
sing for everyone.
I was the extrovert one in the family and Alberto was the reserved one. His
nickname was “Holy Peace and Quiet”. But even though he wouldn’t sing with
me, he was still very musical. In fact, we went to a music academy together
to learn how to play instruments. I took up the piano and he took up the
violin, which he was very good at. In fact, he was always top of his class,
whereas I could be very lazy.
We are very different. I’m an open book. I don’t hide my feelings. Alberto has
a tendency to be quite private, very closed, someone who doesn’t give away
what he’s thinking. But we’ve always been extremely close and had a huge
amount of respect for one another. I love him exactly the way he is now —
the way he’s always been.
Interviews: Ria Higgins
Portrait: Gianluca Moggi
