Anyone who's listened to Ariana Grande's music knows that homegirl can SING. She has a vocal range and technical proficiency rare among pop stars this side of Mariah Carey, to whom she's often compared.
Still, it takes real guts for any pop singer, no matter how great a voice they have, to try their hand at opera. It's an entirely different beast from pop music, one that generally takes years of training to master. But that didn't stop Grande from recording a duet with world-renowned opera tenor Andrea Bocelli. The two singers just released a version of the song "E più ti penso," which uses music from Ennio Morricone's score for Sergio Leone's 1984 movie "Once Upon a Time in America."
The song's lyrics, which were written by Italian composers Tony Renis and Mogol, tell the story of two lovers separated by a great distance. "E più ti penso" was first recorded in 2010 by an Italian tenor trio called Il Volo. Their version is totally solid -- but honestly, we can't help but prefer Bocelli and Grande's.
For the record, this is not a case of Grande besting her idol-slash-rival. Mariah Carey has also performed a duet with a famed male opera singer: the late Pavarotti. The fact that Carey wrote the song they performed together -- and that Pavarotti was arguably an even bigger star than Bocelli -- makes up for the fact that Carey sings in English, rather than Italian.
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