An Italian Tenor and a Long-Lost Cousin

I could never have imagined what’s waiting for me in the top row of the Schottenstein Center. We’ve come to hear the world-famous Italian tenor. In the queue outside the venue, people shiver with cold and buzz about Andrea Bocelli.

Just the day before, he performed at the Opening Ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, then pulled off a legendary trans-Atlantic feat. And now, 24 hours later, nearly 19 thousand of us are about to hear him live in Columbus, Ohio, the first stop of his 30^th Anniversary World Tour.

We breeze through security, manage our electronic tickets as if we know what we are doing, and climb up, up, up—past $900 tickets on the floor, past the club level and the terrace level, up 115 steps to the top row, roughly 90 feet above floor level, where Bocelli will look about the size of a thumb. But where, we are assured, the sound will carry through amazingly well.

We’ve got a bird’s eye view. And some friendly seatmates. There’s something bonding about sharing the nosebleed section. Their names are Bob and Shirley.

They’ve driven five hours to this concert, they tell us. From western Maryland. From Garrett County. And they know all about Grantsville, my hometown. They know the historic Casselman Bridge, once the longest single span stone arch bridge in the United States. And they know the Casselman Inn, once owned by my family.

They know my aunt. When Bob was a boy wearing suspenders and a straw hat, my aunt taught him in an Amish school.

We trade some names. And Bob whips out his phone to open an ancestry app.

“We’re fifth cousins,” he says, just as the house lights go down.

Bocelli’s voice doesn’t boom. It’s sweet, intimate, even humble. He sings about love and faith and home. And overcoming. Born with congenital glaucoma and then completely blinded at age 12 in a soccer accident, he’s an overcomer. His voice shows this resilience. And we like him for it.

Here we are in a city called Cow Town, listening to an Italian who just yesterday sang at San Siro Stadium as the Olympic flame was lit,  who gives us enough opera to make us feel smart, but mixes in enough pop to make it accessible.

His last encore “Nessun Dorma,” also his final on the Olympic stage, brings light to darkness and hope to fear. And we are on our feet, 19,000 of us, including one long-lost fifth cousin.