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Andrea Bocelli's battle with blindness inspires big-screen story / theguardian

He is the golden-voiced Italian tenor who overcame blindness and other extreme obstacles to find success on the world stage, selling more than 80 million albums. Now Andrea Bocelli, 58, has inspired one of Britain's leading film directors to tell his extraordinary story on the big screen. The singer has asked only that his blindness not be portrayed as a disability. The Music of Silence is being shot by Michael Radford, whose previous films include the critically acclaimed Il Postino – for which he received an Oscar nomination – and a version of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino.

This new film, based on Bocelli's autobiographical novel of the same name, explores the relationship between blindness and hearing, as well as other senses heightened by the loss of sight. Bocelli went blind as a child, struggled to teach himself to read music in Braille, and competed in talent shows until his potential was recognised by Luciano Pavarotti, who declared that "there is no finer voice than Bocelli".

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