‘Living a nightmare’: Andrea Bocelli recalls battling #Covid-19 with family

"I was hoping to wake up at any moment."

Andrea Bocelli has recalled the "nightmare" of battling coronavirus alongside his family. The opera singer contracted the virus earlier this year while isolating with his family in his home on the Italian Tuscan coast. Bocelli and his family have since recovered from the virus, but the star said this week that he was struggling to stay positive amidst the illness. "My whole family was contaminated," he told Italian newspaper La Stampa. "We all had a fever - though thankfully not high ones - with sneezing and coughing. "I had to cancel many concerts. It was like living a nightmare because I felt like I was no longer in control of things. I was hoping to wake up at any moment." This comes after the opera singer performed a concert to an empty Duomo Cathedral on Easter Sunday. The "audience-free concert" was broadcasted on Bocelli's YouTube channel, after the Milan Cathedral was closed to the public at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. "On the day in which we celebrate the trust in a life that triumphs, I’m honored and happy to answer ‘Sì’ to the invitation of the City and the Duomo of Milan," Bocelli said ahead of the performance. "I believe in the strength of praying together; I believe in the Christian Easter, a universal symbol of rebirth that everyone – whether they are believers or not – truly needs right now. "Thanks to music, streamed live, bringing together millions of clasped hands everywhere in the world, we will hug this wounded Earth’s pulsing heart, this wonderful international forge that is reason for Italian pride. "The generous, courageous, proactive Milan and the whole of Italy will be again, and very soon, a winning model, engine of a renaissance that we all hope for. It will be a joy to witness it, in the Duomo, during the Easter celebration which evokes the mystery of birth and rebirth."