We Are Love [Special Edition]

Audio Mixers: Cristián Robles; Humberto Gatica.
Recording information: Air Studios, London, England; Czech Television Studios, Prague; Forum Music Village Studios, Roma, Italy; Lion Share Studio, Los Angeles, CA.
Photographer: Christian Lantry.
Arrangers: Chris Walden ; Jerome Leroy; Alterisio Paoletti; Mark Portmann ; Paul Buckmaster; William Ross ; Randy Kerber.
Recorded in Los Angeles and Rome under the watch of Grammy-winning co-producer Humberto Gatica and Tony Renis, the second studio album from dreamy teenage tenors Piero Barone, Ignazio Boschetto, and Gianluca Ginoble, better known as Il Volo, begins appropriately with a sweeping rendition of the Dianne Warren/Aerosmith power ballad "Questo Amore [I Don't Want to Miss a Thing]," dutifully extending the already lengthy 21st century bridge between commercial pop and classical. The trio, which first turned heads on the popular Italian talent show Ti Lascio una Canzone, brings an excitable, youthful bravado to the 12-track We Are Love's more pop-oriented offerings like Warren's newly written "I Bring You to My Senses," U2's "Beautiful Day," and the Mark Portmann-penned title cut, the latter two of which are the only songs sung in English. The more traditional, operatic/classically minded pieces, while seamless, soaring, and impossibly pretty in all the right places, lack the gravitas to truly make the listener swoon, a notion that's lent further weight when the great Placido Domingo steps in halfway through "Il Canto" and effectively steals the show. ~ James Christopher Monger