Andrea Bocelli performs at the Moda Center in Portland June 23. (Giovanni De Sandre)

The misty, verdant gorges of the Pacific Northwest and the sunny hills of Tuscany are 5,600 miles apart, but on June 23 they'll be bridged by the voice of Andrea Bocelli.

The Tuscan opera/pop crossover sensation will bring his wheat-cracked tenor to Portland in a program of beloved arias and heart-on-the-shirtsleeve Italian contemporary music, backed by the 69-piece Oregon Music Festival Orchestra and Choir. It's the type of over-the-top musical extravaganza that tugs at our very notions of romance: impassioned singing, tremulous violins, the swell and surge of synthesizers and emotions writ large, delivered without a trace of irony. This is Bocelli's specialty and has been for nearly 25 years.

It was 1995 when the tenor's self-titled second album produced his first international mega-hit, "Con te partiro." It's still the song fans associate with him perhaps more than any other, and you can bet it will be on his recital program at the Moda Center. A contemporary love ballad with an insistent beat and dramatic key change, it has effusively poetic lyrics, generic enough to project onto a child, parent, friend or lover. Listeners in the mid-1990s read into the words whatever symbolism they wanted and swooned at the melodic conviction of the then-36-year-old Bocelli, whose self-effacing charm and sultry looks landed him on People magazine's "Most Beautiful People" list in 1998.

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Tenor Andrea Bocelli at home in 2016. (Massimo Sestini)

Buoyed by the success of "Con te partiro," he shot into the echelon of middlebrow superstardom we associate with perennial PBS fixtures such as Yanni and Andre Rieu. The rising tenor made a point to sing in staged operas as well, his acting skills and sheer determination aided by stage directors who creatively accommodated the blocking challenges of a sight-impaired romantic lead. (Bocelli lost his sight at the age of 12 after being hit in the head with a soccer ball, inducing a cerebral hemorrhage and blindness. He learned to read music through Braille.)

But his bread and butter remained studio albums -- of which he has sold 90 million to date -- and arena concerts. From the late 1990s through the early 2000s he shared the stage with stars including Luciano Pavarotti, Sarah Brightman and Celine Dion, performed for three popes and five U.S. presidents, sang at the Grammys, the Oscars, the Bellagio Hotel and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Bocelli was big business, a rare breed of entertainer whose onstage humility belied his larger-than-life persona.

Today his once-dark beard and feathered hair have yielded to salt and pepper. Although he turns 60 in September, his voice can still thrill with its various timbres. Sometimes he sings full-throatedly, almost hoarsely, in a virile and declamatory fashion; other times his tone turns light and tinny, like an Italian John Denver.

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Tuscan opera/pop crossover sensation Andrea Bocelli will perform arias and Italian contemporary music during his June 23 concert in Portland. (Luca Rosetti)

He floats high notes with exquisite delicacy, as seen at the 4:10 mark of a popular YouTube video in which he sings the entrance aria from Giuseppe Verdi's "Aida." He begins the climactic B-flat with stentorian thrust but quickly whittles it down to heartrending delicacy, holding the note a lung-busting 20 seconds. Singing pros call this "diminuendo," and it's an effect some of the most gifted opera singers can't manage. If pushed too much, the voice will crack. If not well-enough supported with the lungs and diaphragm, it will also crack. And if a singer takes the easy route and croons it in a Frankie Valli falsetto, the power of the voice vanishes instantly.

How does Bocelli manage to make it sound so easy? "Based on my personal experience over 25 years of studying and exploring singing techniques," he says, it all comes down to "good control of breath, regular and methodical exercises, together with the strong desire to emulate a singer you admire." In other words, there's no substitute for practice and inspiration.

Subtle effects such as these lend a poignancy to the singer's repertoire, transcending even the sappiest strings-and-synths arrangements from the '90s. Bocelli sings not just with technique, but with intense feeling, painting evocative sound-pictures with his vocal cords, lungs and the heart that powers them.

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Andrea Bocelli in 2016. (Massimo Sestini)

Andrea Bocelli

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, June 23

Where: Moda Center, 1 N. Center St.

Tickets: Start at $78, rosequarter.com or 800-745-3000