The uplifting and transformative power of live music is a universal experience. Many of us can remember a particularly inspiring concert or event that left a lasting impression on us. Away from the concert hall, music events and workshops in schools, hospitals, prisons and retirement homes alike all point to the ability music has to bring people together and create meaningful experiences for us, no matter who or where we are.
Yuri Sabatini
One musician familiar with the impact of music in alternative settings is tenor Yuri Sabatini. Based in London but originally from Rome, Yuri sings to audiences young and old, mixing his concert work with residencies in care homes around the UK. His versatility, crossing over between various musical styles, proves a hit wherever he performs.
Ella mi fu rapita… parmi veder le lagrime, Rigoletto, Giuseppe Verdi
Talking to Yuri, he is charming, and very humble. ‘I’m worried I’m talking too much!’ he laughs, despite assurances to the contrary. Although he showed promise as a young singer back in Rome, Yuri’s vocal technique was mismanaged by an early teacher, leaving him unable to sing for six years. His dreams of singing slowly faded, and he settled into a life in sales in his home city.
A few years later, a friend who was living in London invited Yuri to visit, and what started out as a one-month stay turned into a lifelong love affair with the city, and Yuri has been based in London ever since. Leaving his life in Italy behind and with singing only a distant memory, Yuri started working as a bus driver in London to make ends meet. In the meantime, his son was born, and this provided a subtle nudge to reconsider singing.
‘I started singing again when my son was a baby,’ says Yuri, ‘trying to calm him down when he was crying! I’d not sung until then, but then I started singing more and more.’
One day, when Yuri was 30, he was singing to himself between shifts in the bus garage when his manager heard an operatic voice emerging from outside her office. ‘I saw her coming out of the office looking for who was singing. I ran away from her because I thought I’d be in trouble!’ he recounts.
‘She found me and asked sternly, ‘Were you the one who was singing?’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry, it was very loud, I won’t do it again.’ She took me to her office, and I was very scared. She said, ‘Are you a professional opera singer?’ I told her no, that I sang when I was young but then stopped. She then said that I shouldn’t be driving buses: I should be out there singing.’
That chance encounter gave Yuri the encouragement to pick up where he left off and retrain his voice. Several auditions, teachers, choruses and principal roles later, Yuri won a competition in 2008 run by the Royal Opera House, which saw him performing live in Trafalgar Square to over 10,000 people.
I asked him, did he feel nervous for this performance? ‘It felt good,’ he tells me. ‘For me, it’s all about communicating with the audience. I didn’t have any stage fright. I just enjoy it when I sing to people. For me it’s like talking with somebody, expressing your emotions sincerely. You’re telling them something about yourself.’
Whether it’s a performance in a concert hall or a residency in a care home, Yuri feels the same connection with the audience, whatever the setting – arguably sometimes even more with the latter.
Nessun Dorma Finale: Standing Ovation
‘I love it,’ he says, speaking of his work in care homes. ‘I worked hard on my voice to bring it to the level that I’m at right now, in the way that I can use my voice freely. I love bringing people good quality performances, but with my heart, so that they connect.
‘People become alive – they cry, or laugh, they come with you on the journey and it’s really beautiful. I love this. It’s the most satisfying and gratifying thing when I do that.’
Yuri finds himself singing in many different settings, from corporate events to care homes, but for him there is a special place in his heart for his work with seniors. ‘When I spend that hour with the residents [of care homes] you’re opening your heart to them,’ he tells me.
‘You can look in their eyes and where some people might see an elderly person I still see the child. I see their hopes, their disappointments. When I sing about love I know that they know what I’m singing about, because they felt it. When I sing about sadness, loss, I know that they can relate to these feelings.’
A typical performance of Yuri’s incorporates traditional operatic repertoire with more modern classics, jazz standards and songs from the shows. ‘Even if I sing ‘Autumn Leaves’, or something from a musical,’ he says, ‘It brings them back to when they were young, when they would go out to the theatre to watch something, or they might remember playing records of Mario Lanza that their parents would play when introducing them to music.’
Mario Lanza, a Hollywood star and tenor of yesteryear, is one of Yuri’s heroes. ‘The things he sang,’ says Yuri, ‘are what I enjoy singing the most, and in fact I’ve done several tribute concerts to him.’
Yuri doesn’t treat his care home performances differently to any other work he does. ‘I don’t just take [the residents] for granted and assume they don’t know. I’m really tough on myself. I keep training, studying, learning new repertoire, and I try to give them the very best.
‘When I sing to them I’m thinking that I’m singing in a theatre, and I expect them to be knowledgable and appreciative of singing this or that note a certain way, or doing certain dynamics. I know that they feel it and appreciate it.’
Apart from Mario Lanza, what are some of Yuri’s other favourites? ‘There are a few arias that I really love,’ he says. I love ‘Che gelida manina’ from La Bohème. I have an affinity for Puccini. Maybe I’m cheesy and stereotypical, but for me he’s great. When I sing that I feel like the audience are with me. They all become my Mimis and Rodolfos – we are all there living this moment.
‘From musical theatre, they always ask me to sing ‘Bring Him Home’ [from Les Misérables]- I don’t know what it is about that song that makes it so emotional. I think I live everything I sing.’
Yuri’s passion and commitment to his work is self-evident. He is a dedicated musician and an artist who enjoys sharing his love of music with audiences big and small, young and old, and – rest assured – he certainly doesn’t talk too much.
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