“Vegas audiences have seen everything, so there’s a lot of pressure,” Il Divo’s David Miller explains to me.  Comprised of Miller (an American tenor), Urs Bühler (a Swiss tenor), Carlos Marín (a Spanish baritone), and Sébastien Izambard (a French pop-vocalist); Il Divo has been excitedly preparing for their first Las Vegas residency, in The Venetian Theatre at The Venetian Las VegasIl Divo: This Is Your Night is a limited-engagement residency, consisting of six performances beginning on Wednesday, September 20th.

Considering that, since its formation fourteen years ago, this quartet has received more than 50 number one records; gone gold or platinum 160 times in 33 countries; and has sold more than 30 million albums, worldwide – I’m pretty sure they’re up for the task.  Following are some highlights from the hour I spent speaking with Miller...

ShulmanSays: So, what do you think about the term “popera”?

David Miller: Aw, I love it!  Actually, I’m fairly certain that I’m the one who created that word.  I could be wrong; I don’t know if it was used before me; but I remember that we were being interviewed, in the UK, in the fall of 2004, and someone had said ‘You guys are like a pop-opera something…” and I said “Haha! Popera!” and everybody went “Oooooooo.” And, we’ve been hearing it used ever since.

SS:  Y’all sing in any number of languages.  Do you actually know the context of what you’re singing, or are you singing, phonetically?  I guess I’m most curious about the songs in Japanese, as none of you is a native Japanese speaker.

DM:  Correct!  Well, I can’t say this is true for all of us; but, at this point, I think that we all understand the words that we’re singing.  For myself [Miller is a classically trained opera singer], I was schooled in French and German – the opera languages – and some in Czech.  So, for instance, with Spanish – I had to learn Spanish, for the songs with Il Divo.  I’d never learned it as a language; but I’d derive the meaning via Italian [the old drop the “i” and add an “o” trick], which was close enough.

Now, over the past fourteen years, I’ve picked-up quite a bit of Spanish, with Carlos (obviously) being our teacher; but, to address your point about Japanese, I’ve been studying Japanese since our first trip, there, in 2005.  I’ve always had a fascination with Japan, and I figured it’d go a long way to establish relations, over there, if at least one of us could say basic little phrases, like “Hello” and “How are you” in their language.  Then, every time we went back, I would learn more and more; and now I speak the equivalent of second-grade Japanese (because it’s hard!!).

SS:  It could just be the way you guys are framed, in all the photos I’ve seen; but is everyone else in Il Divo a half-a-head shorter than you?

DM: Mmmm…  Three-quarters.

SS:  ‘Cause either you’re the Jolly Green Giant of Il Divo, or they’ve got you standing on a riser, in every shot!

DM:  This is why I’m always out in the back, or sitting down; in every photo.

SS:  What’s the secret to Il Divo?

DM:  You know, people ask us that, all the time; and we’re baffled!  You know, since the beginning, it’s just been this onslaught of trying to answer this question.  On the first album we had four different producers, who took two or three tracks, each.  And they got us in the room, and put us in front of a mic.  Some of the songs were new compositions, and some were covers.  And we recorded each song in Spanish, Italian, and English, just to see which one would work.  So, it was this grand experiment.  Then, when we heard all the tracks back, we were like “Well, this one sounds better in English, but that one sounds better in Italian (and so on). 

So though this all we had multiple producers producing songs in multiple languages; and one would say “Maybe the sound of this song would sound better stripped-down,” while another would say (about another track), “This could really benefit from using a full orchestration – and that would really suit your voices.”  Everyone had a different idea of how best to use our voices; and we ended-up with this circus of an album.

Continued in Part 2…

Il Divo: This Is Your Night
The Venetian Theatre | The Venetian Las Vegas
Wednesday, September 20th – Saturday, September 30th
Click HERE for info and tickets

Get into it!
#IlDivo

The world’s greatest hip-hop collective returns this weekend with the second edition of the history-making WU-TANG CLAN: THE SAGA CONTINUES… THE LAS VEGAS RESIDENCY