There are really two anniversaries behind Andrea Bocelli’s best-known song: Con te partirò was first heard at the Sanremo Music Festival in February 1995, which means the Italian original turned 30 last year. The version most of the English-speaking world knows, however, arrived in 1996.
Retitled Time to Say Goodbye and recorded with British soprano Sarah Brightman, it turns 30 this year and, together with its Italian version, it tells us a somewhat unusual story: a song that Italy did not immediately embrace became one of the vehicles that turned an Italian tenor into a global star.
