Sogno [Remastered] in Bloomington, MN

Sogno
consists entirely of new compositions, much of which are deliberately skewed toward the
pop
audience whom
Andrea Bocelli
was well on his way to earning in the spring of 1999. In other words, it's an album that seems to be a progression, at least on the surface, but it's also a consolidation of the crossover audience that he wooed over the course of the late '90s.
pulls off that trick, balancing
Bocelli
's
opera
background with modern
and Italian music. That stance alone -- finding a middle ground between
classical
and modern
music -- will alienate the purists (who, truth be told, haven't been all that thrilled with
in the first place), but this doesn't discredit the music. True, there are moments on
that don't work as well as others, but overall it flows nicely and maintains a fine balance between pieces that suggest
without actually being
, and
adult contemporary
songs such as
"Nel Cuore Lei"
(a duet with
Eros Ramazzotti
) or the
Celine Dion
duet
"The Prayer,"
which was originally featured on the soundtrack for
The Quest for Camelot
. The most interesting moments are songs like
"Come Un Fiume Tu,"
a collaboration with
Ennio Morricone
that manages to not only find a middle ground between those two extremes, but to push forward, as well. Songs like these keep
fascinating, but it's the
-flavored numbers that stand to bring in a larger,
-oriented audience, who will then likely explore the rest of
's catalog. For skeptics, however, the very presence of
-leaning numbers will confirm their doubts. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine