DID YOU KNOW?

Skyrocketed to international fame by his fine tenor voice and some lucky encounters, Andrea Bocelli was born in 1958 in Tuscany, where his family still has a farm. Visually impaired from birth, he was permanently blinded by a freak football accident at the age of 12. As a child he loved music, studied several instruments, and above all, he sang. He graduated from Pisa University with a law degree and worked for a year as a lawyer. Then he decided to take the plunge into the performing arts, and studied voice with celebrated tenor Franco Corelli. To pay for his lessons Bocelli performed in clubs and piano bars at night. In 1992 Italian rock star Zucchero was looking for a tenor for a demo tape of his “Miserere.” He chose Bocelli, and it was Bocelli’s voice that Luciano Pavarotti heard when Zucchero played the tape in a successful attempt to persuade Pavarotti to record the song. Miserere soared to the top of the charts, and when Zucchero needed a tenor for live performances and tours, he called on Bocelli. This led to more tours, appearances on television and recording contracts. Bocelli’s single of “Time to Say Goodbye,” a duet with Sarah Brightman, sold almost 3 million copies. In 1998 Bocelli began to tour America. He made his American opera debut the same year.

Source: National Italian American Foundation

Adriano Lombardi is a living legend in his hometown of Mercogliano, Italy, in the region of Avellino. Lombardi, 57, is one of southern Italy’s most respected former soccer players and coaches. Twenty-five years ago, he was captain of the US Avellino soccer team, one of many teams he would play for in an outstanding career on the field. Now he is a prisoner in his own deteriorating body – in February 2003, Lombardi announced that he suffers from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a crippling motor-neuron disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. In an exclusive CBS-Miami investigative report in May 2003 by Michele Gillen, CBS-4 chief investigative reporter, Italian magistrate Raffaele Guariniello of Turin revealed evidence of what he says is an eight-fold incidence of death from ALS among Italian soccer players relative to the general population. ALS is a rare and fatal disease that attacks nerve cells and pathways in the spinal cord and brain, leaving victims helpless against progressive paralysis that makes it difficult to walk, speak and even breathe. In a three-year study of the 24,000 athletes who played in Italy’s top soccer divisions from 1960 and 1997, Guariniello found that 8 had already died from ALS. (In a normal population of 24,000, the statistical number of deaths should have been 0.69) According to Italian newspapers, there are as many as 40 cases of former Italian soccer players suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, some of whom were paralyzed with the disease in their mid-30’s whereas the onset of symptoms typically appear when a person in his or her 60’s. “This is a mystery we need to solve’” said Guariniello. The heart-wrenching exposé, in which Lombardi and other soccer players pleaded with the world to study them, attracted the attention of the NIAF. In response, NIAF sponsored a first-of-its-kind medical conference in Lombardi’s hometown (he was too ill to travel) from June 30 to July 1, 2003, aimed at examining the high incidence of ALS among Italian soccer players. Walter G. Bradley, D.M., F.R.C.P, chairman of the department of neurology at the University of Miami and medical director for the Kessenich Family MDA ALS Center in Miami, met with Italian doctors and examined the stricken soccer players and other athletes in an attempt to establish a link between clinical and epidemiological studies of ALS. According to Bradley, the summit gave him the opportunity to collaborate with Italian doctors in the search for what triggers the disease and potential link between soccer, athletics and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Source: National Italian American Foundation