The voice. Any music lover with working ears sooner or later gets around to appreciating pure vocal quality. Sometimes a single note can express it all. The velvet crooning of Tony Bennett has been rediscovered by 20somethings. In the '90s, talented tonsils became so popular that a few were discount-packaged as "The Three Tenors" -- Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras for the price of one.

So the success of Michael Amante, who will be in concert May 11 at the Providence Performing Arts Center, hasn't been surprising.

When discovered by an influential producer while singing at the Harlem nightspotat Rao's in 1996, the New Yorker was a graphics designer at Ernst & Young. Amante has since been called "the new Mario Lanza" by Bennett. Last summer, two years after PBS made a household name of Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, the network broadcast the hour-long special Michael Amante: America's Tenor. Amante's booming bel canto voice got him described in the New York Times as "the swashbuckling tenor [who] exhibits both the voice and charisma of a crossover star."

Crossover but with a decidedly operatic list. Last year's self-titled debut CD strayed no farther from operatic classics such as "Celeste Aida" and "La donna è mobile" than to a rendition of "Grenada" in Spanish, and the sentimental Italian chestnuts "O Sole Mio" and "Mamma."

In concerts, he's had more than his share of intimidating audiences. He's sung for both the Pope and Pavarotti. Guess which called for a gulp and a fidget?

"Definitely before Pavarotti. The Pope is going to bless you and send you on your way even if you're terrible," says Amante on the phone from his Queens apartment. His speaking voice sounds oddly normal. "In he walks. I'm, `Oh, my god!' " he recalls with a rueful little gasp. "It was nerve-wracking. My knees were banging." Amante had been told that Pavarotti would be very critical and harsh. "But he was so sweet and so generous. He was very, very complimentary and actually got me some concert work both here in the United States and in Canada."

Raised in a second-generation Italian-American family in Syracuse, this 30something first grew fond of opera as a boy, listening to his father's light tenor serenade his mother when he came home from work and watching his mother's face light up. But when puberty struck, rock replaced Rigoletto, so from 15 to his early 20s Amante enjoyed listening to the likes of Journey, Kansas, and Foreigner. Over that time he sang in several small-time bands, before he grew sick of it.

"I got to the point where I really got tired of playing at bars. Just a sea of beer bottles," he says. "You don't make much money. Certainly it was fun and great for meeting girls and that kind of stuff, but I wanted to get serious. I started to really get serious about studying voice."

His undergraduate studies were in behavioral psychology, and he worked as a crisis intervention counselor for Syracuse city schools for nine years, going to Syracuse University part-time. He went back full-time at 26, transferring to SUNY Oswego to finish his degree, this time as an art and music major.

It was the chorus master of a non-denominational church outside Syracuse who rekindled his interest in opera, saying that the tonality of his voice was perfect for it. The vocal instructor -- "a concert baritone; he wasn't just some schmo that liked opera" -- had Amante listen to a recording of Swedish tenor Jussi Björling, whose aria "Una fortiva lagrima" knocked his socks off.

"So I took the recording that he lent me, learnt a bunch [of arias] phonetically, went back to him that week and sang them to him, and he was really blown away," Amante says. "That was the first inkling that I was going to sing classical."

He buckled down to vocal lessons and spent a semester in Italy learning Italian. (And learning that while the young women his age were bemused by his belting out "the old songs" to them, their ever-present mothers and older aunts would all but swoon. Amante never paid for a restaurant meal in Italy.) The coaching and polishing haven't stopped, even though the tenor feels that his voice is now "10 times the size it used to be." He usually rehearses up to a high F above high C, like a runner practicing with weights.

It took about a decade until opera turned from an avocation into a profession, but once his career happened, Amante had a brisk climb. That kickoff CD last year was produced by Charles Koppelman, who has shepherded the likes of Sinatra, Streisand, and Billy Joel.

Does Amante feel comfortable being groomed and handled by music industry pros? Is he singing what he most likes to sing?

"Well, in concerts I do sing what I like to sing. Even more so now, since I have a lot of control over it," he says. "I'm glad in a way that I'm not in a classical track, because they don't let you do anything else."

He enjoys having done everything from Heineken TV spots to movie soundtracks. Yet his first love is opera, and while he's sung lead roles in La Bohème and Madama Butterfly, he hasn't performed in a major opera company. That both dismays and rankles him.

"I would love for the Met to call me up and say, `Hey, will you sing Bohème tonight?' I'd say, `Sure. I'll do it for nothing.' But chances are that's not going to happen," he says. "So I sing `Nessun dorma' from Turandot every night. I like to bring that to an audience that appreciates it and also an audience that can have fun. Sometimes you get into a classical situation where the audience is half asleep. I don't want that. I want my audiences dancing and jumping and rushing the stage afterwards.

"I've been able to use my voice and make people feel good," he adds. "Sonny Grasso, who's my mentor/manager/adopted father, I go over to his office and he's been on the phone with California, because he's a movie producer, and you can tell that his blood pressure is about to blow his eyeballs out of his head. And if I sing just a little bit to him, it brings him peace."

The way Amante says that, softening in the recollection, it's clear that doing what he loves and being appreciated for it has made him feel pretty good too.

Michael Amante will perform on Saturday, May 11 at 8 p.m. at the Providence Performing Arts Center. Call (401) 421-ARTS.

Issue Date: May 10 - 16, 2002