Appearing on reality television shows like "The Voice" and "America's Got Talent" take a bucket load of courage and self-confidence and, hopefully, talent. At the judging stand are a trio of stars ready, willing and able to dash all the contestants hopes or grant them entrance to their wildest dreams of success.
For four men it was a life-altering event when they were discovered after a two year search internationally by Simon Cowell, judge on "The X Factor" in the United Kingdom a decade ago. Simon Cowell put these individual stars together, all successful solo singers in their own right, and created "Il Divo," a quartet of singers that have garnered universal appeal. The four have gone on to achieve incredible levels of musical success.
Cowell and his team searched far and wide and introduced the Spanish baritone Carlos Marin with American tenor David Miller, Swiss-born tenor Urs Buhler and French pop singer Sebastien Izambard and encouraged them to fuse opera and pop in a multi-national quartet. After an initial rocky start, the men are now like brothers. Recently at the Marquis Theatre in New York where they sang the world's greatest musicals of greatest songs on Broadway, they will be shining bright for one concert only on Sunday, November 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Palace Theater in Waterbury.
The group sings in Spanish, English, Italian, French and even Latin. They may sing such songs as "Bring Him Home," "You'll Never Walk Alone," "Some Enchanted Evening," "Music of the Night" and "Impossible Dream." Compared to the style of The Three Tenors, they are clearly a globe trotting phenomenon, traveling across continents in hundreds of venues. To date, they have sold 26 million records.
Their name "Il Divo" has been translated in Italian to mean "divine male performer," or more literally "star" or "celebrity," simply "The Divine." In English, it seems to mean "Spanish egg," who knew.
For tickets ($55-177), call the Palace Theater, 100 East Main Street, Waterbury at 203-346-2000 or online at www.palacetheaterct.org. A pre-show dinner catered by Riverhouse Catering at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday will be held in the Poli Club upstairs. The cost is $62.50 and reservations are required.
Come be thrilled by the voices and the harmonies that have made Il Divo so spectacular and affirm how on target and intelligent Simon Cowell was in foreseeing their future a decade ago.
Yes, they are absolutely wonderful, but do get your facts straight! The members of Il Divo have never competed on the X Factor, either alone or together. Each had an estabished professional career long before Simon Cowell started looking for singers for his new project. Three are professionally trained opera singers and one was a chart topping pop singer.
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