Andrea Bocelli: Is He Blind? How He Went Blind at 12

Yes. Andrea Bocelli is blind, and he has been completely blind since he was 12. He was born on September 22, 1958, in Lajatico, Tuscany, with congenital glaucoma, which left him with very poor sight as a child. At 12, a ball hit him in the face during a soccer game at his boarding school, and he lost the sight he had left (official site, People, 2024, The Hollywood Reporter, 2018).

Below: what he was born with, the operations, the two versions of what happened at 12, what he remembers seeing, braille music, the law degree and the career, each with its year. He is one of the people in our list of famous blind people. Pages were checked on October 30, 2026. Where sources disagree, we say so.

Key points

• Born with congenital glaucoma. By age 3½ he had been operated on 13 times in Turin, his brother says (People, 2024).
• Completely blind at 12. A ball hit him in the face while he played in goal at school. In his words: "From that blow, a hemorrhage" (People, 2024).
• Eye or brain? The sources differ. He has said the ball hit his right eye; Classic FM and People (1997) call it a brain hemorrhage. We give both (Classic FM, 2023).
• Music in braille. Classic FM says he taught himself to read music in braille, and his memoir describes learning it (Bookshare).
• Law first, then the stage. He studied law at the University of Pisa from 1981 to 1986, and his career began at the Sanremo festival in 1994 (People, 1997, official site).

Andrea Bocelli at a glance

Each row is sourced in the sections below.

Born with congenital glaucoma

He was born on September 22, 1958, on the family farm in Lajatico, among the vineyards near Pisa (official site). People wrote in 1997 that he had glaucoma from birth (People, 1997), and The Hollywood Reporter says he was born with congenital glaucoma (The Hollywood Reporter, 2018). The publisher's synopsis of his memoir puts it a little differently: he was "still an infant when he developed glaucoma" (Bookshare).

What congenital glaucoma is. Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that can cause blindness by damaging the optic nerve, at the back of the eye. In congenital glaucoma, babies are born with a problem in the eye that keeps fluid from draining normally; it is rare, about 1 in 10,000 babies born in the United States (National Eye Institute).

The operations. His first eye operation came at 8 months, People reported in 1997. In the 2024 documentary Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe, his younger brother Alberto says Andrea, by the age of 3½, "had been operated on 13 times in Turin." Then: "It was torture." (People, 2024, Hola, 2024). Bocelli has put it in one line: "The doctors tried to cure me with various operations," but "there was nothing that could be done" (Classic FM, 2023).

What he could see. "As a child, I was considered extremely short-sighted," he says in the documentary. "I could see everything but only from up close" (People, 2024). In an interview quoted by Classic FM, he said his right eye was "the only one which I could see light and colour with" (Classic FM, 2023).

Music as comfort. After his first operation, his mother told People, he stopped crying when a child in the hospital played a classical record (People, 1997). Bocelli has said that when he was five, his mother found that "the only way to comfort me with my glaucoma" was classical music on the record player (Classic FM, 2023).

Boarding school at 7. By age 7 he was sent to a boarding school for visually impaired children, because "no local school would take him," his brother says. Bocelli calls it "the worst moment" of his life (People, 2024); Hola translates the same line as "the worst time of my life" (Hola, 2024). The sources we found don't name the school. For how these schools work, see schools for the blind.

What happened at 12

In his own words. The fullest account is in the 2024 documentary. At the boarding school, during a soccer game, he was put in goal: "No idea why, as I had never been the goalie before." He never played in goal again. "A ball hit me right in the face. From that blow, a hemorrhage," he says, and "the rest is history." His brother adds: "That's when darkness fell." (People, 2024). Hola's translation of the same scene: "The ball struck me in the face, resulting in a hemorrhage" (Hola, 2024).

In the interview Classic FM quotes, he said where the ball landed: "I was hit violently in the face with a ball on my right eye," the eye that still saw light and color (Classic FM, 2023).

Where the accounts differ. The bleeding is where the versions split:

• A brain hemorrhage. Classic FM writes that he had a football accident and "suffered a brain haemorrhage" (Classic FM, 2023). People said the same in 1997: "a brain hemorrhage caused by a head injury during a soccer game" (People, 1997).
• A blow to the eye. Wikipedia says he lost his vision after being "hit in the eye with a football" (Wikipedia).
• His words. The ball hit his face, on the right eye, and a hemorrhage followed. In the sources we found, he doesn't say whether the bleeding was in the eye or the brain.

Both versions agree on the ball, the age and the result, and his words fit either one, so we don't choose.

When. Every source gives his age, 12, and none gives a date. Born in September 1958, he turned 12 in September 1970, so it happened in 1970 or 1971. The Hollywood Reporter says he "lost his vision entirely after a soccer accident when he was 12," and the synopsis of his memoir says "By the age of twelve he was completely blind" (The Hollywood Reporter, 2018, Bookshare).

Is Andrea Bocelli completely blind?

Yes. Hola describes the accident as the one that left him "completely and permanently blind at 12," and Classic FM says he "completely lost his sight in both eyes" (Hola, 2024, Classic FM, 2023). None of the sources we found says he perceives any light today. For the range of what blind people see, from some light to none, see what do blind people see.

"I remember extremely well the world I saw. Colors, everything," he says in the documentary. "How could I forget those memories?" (People, 2024).

He has also said blindness doesn't define him. "The fact that I am blind is not what defines my life," he told an interviewer, as Classic FM quotes it. On losing his sight: "Even when I lost my sight I was exactly the same." He loved horses and bicycles before the accident and kept riding both after it (Classic FM, 2023).

Braille and reading music

He reads music in braille. Classic FM says Bocelli "taught himself to read music in Braille" and learned to play the piano (Classic FM, 2023). The publisher's synopsis of his memoir says the book describes "the challenges of learning to read music in Braille" (Bookshare).

His lessons began before the accident: piano at 6, flute and saxophone at 7 (official site, People, 1997).

What we couldn't find. None of the sources we found gives the year he learned braille music, and none says how he learns an opera role or a new song today. So we don't say. How the code itself works is in braille music.

A memoir written on a braille computer. The synopsis says he "wrote this memoir himself on a special Braille computer, without a ghostwriter" (Bookshare). "I wrote the book at the end of the 1990s," he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. He wrote The Music of Silence quickly, so his ill father could read it, and it is "told in third person and through the pseudonym of Amos" (The Hollywood Reporter, 2018). For the other ways blind people read, from braille to audio, see how do blind people read.

The law degree

Singing was not his first plan. In 1981 he enrolled at the University of Pisa to study law because, he told People, "In life we should have concrete alternatives." He graduated in 1986 and practiced for a few years while playing in piano bars around Pisa (People, 1997).

His official site says he played the piano in local bars to pay for singing lessons, and he "graduated in Law at the University of Pisa." When the stage came, it was "No more courtrooms or requests in piano bars" (official site). The memoir, its publisher says, describes "his struggles with law school" (Bookshare). For other careers blind people hold, see jobs for blind people.

From piano bars to Pavarotti

He studied singing with Luciano Bettarini, then went to the tenor Franco Corelli. He calls himself "a modern but old fashioned tenor" (official site).

1992, the demo tape. People wrote in 1997 that the Italian rock star Zucchero discovered him in 1992. Zucchero gave Luciano Pavarotti a demo tape of Bocelli singing "Miserere," and Pavarotti said, "There is no one finer" (People, 1997). The memoir's synopsis calls it his "big break in 1992" (Bookshare). His official site credits Caterina Caselli, who signed him to her record label, Sugar (official site).

The years that followed, from his official site:

• 1994. He won the newcomers' section of the Sanremo festival with "Il mare calmo della sera," released his first album and made his opera debut as Macduff in Verdi's Macbeth.
• 1995. He went back to Sanremo, this time as a star, with "Con te partirò."
• 1996. He sang "Con te partirò" on TV as "Time to Say Goodbye," a duet with the English singer Sarah Brightman.
• 1997. Romanza, his international debut album, reached the top of the charts around the world.
• 2024. Concerts celebrated thirty years of his career (official site).

"Singing," Bocelli told People in 1997, "was my destiny" (People, 1997).

His life reached the screen twice. The Music of Silence, a film of his memoir directed by Michael Radford, was made in 2017 and opened in the United States in February 2018 (Classic FM, 2023, The Hollywood Reporter, 2018). Classic FM says Bocelli asked Radford not to show his blindness as a disability. The documentary Andrea Bocelli: Because I Believe, directed by Cosima Spender, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2024 (People, 2024).

Does blindness shape his singing?

He says no. People ask, he said, whether his lack of sight and the way he sings are related. "But there's no connection." (Classic FM, 2023).

The Hollywood Reporter asked him in 2018 how his life might have gone without the soccer accident. He said he doesn't think about it, and that he doesn't think the accident has "somehow influenced my grown-up life, my profession or my musical and creative activities" (The Hollywood Reporter, 2018). Another blind musician with his own story of sight and music is Stevie Wonder.

Where Braillito fits

Braillito, our app, teaches braille. It teaches the braille cells in lessons with exercises you play, with lives, levels and a daily streak: 59 lessons in 8 worlds in English. It also has a translator, a dictionary and a cell builder. The English lessons are uncontracted braille (grade 1); they don't teach contracted braille or transcription, and Braillito isn't a braille transcriber.

Nothing here means Andrea Bocelli uses or endorses Braillito. If his story makes you want to learn braille yourself, the cells are where it starts. The translator on braillito.com shows how a word or short phrase looks in UEB, but it only applies the rules a program can apply, so it doesn't replace a transcriber. Without paying, the braille translator works in any browser.

Braillito is a subscription with no free version; depending on the plan, it starts with a free trial or a discounted first period, if it's your first subscription (is Braillito free?). Get Braillito.

Frequently asked questions

Is Andrea Bocelli completely blind?

Yes. He has been completely blind since he was 12, after a ball hit him in the face during a soccer game at school (Hola, 2024, The Hollywood Reporter, 2018). Before that he saw poorly: "I could see everything but only from up close" (People, 2024). No source we found says he perceives light today.

How did Andrea Bocelli go blind?

He was born with congenital glaucoma and had many eye operations as a small child. At 12, a ball hit him in the face, and in his words, "From that blow, a hemorrhage" (People, 2024). He has said the ball hit his right eye. Classic FM and People (1997) call it a brain hemorrhage, while Wikipedia says a blow to the eye; he doesn't say where the bleeding was (Classic FM, 2023).

Can Andrea Bocelli read music?

Yes, in braille. Classic FM says he "taught himself to read music in Braille," and his memoir describes the challenges of learning it (Classic FM, 2023, Bookshare). No source we found gives the year he learned. How the code works is in braille music.

Was Andrea Bocelli born blind?

No. He was born with congenital glaucoma and very poor sight: "As a child, I was considered extremely short-sighted" (People, 2024). He lost the rest at 12. More blind singers are in famous blind people.