At age 26, singer Michael Amante "got really tired of singing for drunk people."
The Syracuse, N.Y., native had been singing in rock bands in bars since he was 14 ("I could grow a beard in two days, so I looked older than I was," he says) .
He started learning Broadway show songs and how to sing "about a dozen opera arias phonetically in Italian."
Amante sang for a concertmaster for a church in New York, "and he was just blown away," Amante says by phone from his home just outside Queens, N.Y. "He said I should study opera because the timbre of my voice was perfect for it."
And so in the early 1990s, Amante mothballed his rock 'n' roll dreams and ventured onto Luciano Pavarotti turf.
"I got ragged on by all the opera aficionados -- how dare I sing that material, not coming out of Juilliard!" Amante says. "I was like, 'Well look, I sing it good and I feel like singing it, so why can't I?' "
Amante's self-titled debut album, released in 2001, was an all-classical work that featured arias from "La Boheme," "Tosca," "Rigoletto," "Turandot" and "Aida." The album landed Amante near the top of Billboard's Midline Classical Artists chart, just ahead of Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras.
Subsequent Amante albums featured Broadway classics, American standards and songs sung in Italian, thus earning Amante his nickname, the "People's Tenor."
Amante brings his "Tribute to Luciano Pavarotti" show Feb. 20 to Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach. During that phone interview, Amante spoke about his meetings with Pavarotti, and why belting out opera is easier than singing Broadway or Journey songs.
Are you crazy, doing a tribute to Pavarotti?
Well, here's my thing. My wife and I knew Luciano and he was very good for us. We went to the tribute they did for him at the Metropolitan Opera and we hated it. It was awful. I figured, "Shoot, I'll do my own and I'll sing all his high notes and people will be well satisfied." I'm the only tenor in the world crazy enough to put all his arias together and sing them in one show.
Isn't that setting you up for comparisons to one of the greatest singers of all time?
No, I don't think so. I certainly don't compare myself to him. But I have no problem singing a high C (note) on every song and he was known as the "King of the High C's." Trying to get tenors these days to sing one high C is like trying to get a bull to give birth (laughs).
A lot of them can't do it and a lot of them have such attitudes you don't want them to do it. But I was a rock singer for a long time and I was singing way above high C for many years. ¶ At the end of Pavarotti's career, there was an uproar because he couldn't hit the high C anymore.
I had a handful of encounters with him. He was always a very nervous person. Sopranos and tenors are a neurotic bunch of people anyway (laughs). But he was always nervous about that. He used to say, "I don't know what's going to happen until I open my mouth." And I would say, "I wouldn't worry about it, sir, you're going to be just fine."
Did you have any formal training?
The only formal training I had at that point was coaches. In New York City I trained with (renowned Italian tenor and opera singer) Franco Corelli before he died. He said to me I was the best tenor he had ever heard, but he may have said that to a hundred people. But he was very nice to me, very complimentary. ¶ I'm a natural tenor. I can crawl out of bed after being drunk all night and still hit a high C (laughs). I don't have to warm up to it.
When did you make your operatic debut?
I went to Italy in the early '90s to study Italian -- mostly to study Italian girls (laughs). Because I sang to them in Italian and my diction was near perfect, they thought I was a natural speaker. I was like, "No, I'm learning this." I had a lot of nice things happen to me in Italy. I wound up accidentally singing for the pope and being invited to the Vatican.
I do a lot of impromptu singing. I guess that's been the story of my life. I can sing to anybody in any situation. A lot of good things have happened to me because of that.
I came to New York City in '95 and got a job as a senior graphic designer at Ernst and Young. I did a lot of singing around town. I got a job singing this thing called "unexpected opera," where I'd just go up to a table in a restaurant and sing 30 seconds of an opera aria, and people would lose their minds.
I met a guy who said, "Hey, do you want to do a record?" "Sure, man (laughs)."
People assume the classical stuff is more difficult to sing -- is it?
The classical singing is actually easier. I had really good teachers and I talked to Luciano a lot about the voice. It was very easy for me to learn bel canto, which is the Italian technique of opera singing. Basically you use the bones of your face to create this big sound.
It doesn't take a lot of effort to sound big. The hardest singing is singing soft. Especially if you stay crescendo seamlessly from a triple forte (very loud) down to a pianissimo (soft), it's very hard to do. And once you are able to master that, you can really sing anything.
I change my technique and style depending on what kind of music I'm singing. Whereas Pavarotti would sing bel canto whether he was singing opera or a Journey song, I definitely change my voice from when I'm singing opera and when I'm doing Broadway.
When I heard Pavarotti do his thing with U2, it was still Pavarotti. You've just explained why Pavarotti doesn't sound like Robert Plant.
He didn't want to, because he was a high classical opera singer. For example, when I was in "West Side Story" I would sing (sings in classic Broadway style), "Maria, I just met a girl named Maria." Whereas he would sing (sings in opera style a la Pavarotti), "Maria, I just met a girl named Maria."
He had that real fighting edge to his voice, which is the bel canto style. If you're singing opera, the voice has to penetrate, whereas I think it sounds like hell if you sing Broadway like that. I do a lot of concerts with very different styles.
What's your concert here going to be?
You're going to hear a mix. It'll be a lot of classical things because we have a big orchestra, so we're going to do the big arias from "La Boheme," "Tosca," "Turandot," "Rigoletto." And I'll probably sing "Maria" from "West Side Story," "If I Can't Love Her" from "Beauty and the Beast" -- the modern style of Broadway belting.
Do you ever go back to your rock roots? In the shower, do you burst into a Journey song?
Of course, man (laughs). I sing that stuff all the time. Especially when I'm bathing my kids. They love to hear me belt out (sings loudly) "You're as cold as ice, you're willing to sacrifice our love." They love that stuff.
Maybe some of that will come out onstage here.
I don't know. People who come to see me, they want to hear that classical music. If I come out with Journey, they might go insane.
If You Go
WHO: Michael Amante's Tribute to
Luciano Pavarotti
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Peabody
Auditorium, 600 Auditorium
Blvd., Daytona Beach
TICKETS: $27-$40 plus service charge, available at the auditorium box office
and Ticketmaster
INFORMATION: 386-671-3462
Photo: Doreen D'Agostino Media
