Andrea Bocelli and wife are ‘exhausted’ but enthusiastic after being ‘called to evangelize’

It’s not every day you see Andrea Bocelli, Kris Kristofferson and Quincy Jones at the same event, but they’ll be together at Las Vegas’ most extravagant charity event of the year.

Saturday’s “Power of Love” gala at the MGM Grand Garden Arena will raise money for Keep Memory Alive, the fundraising arm of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas.

Bocelli will sing “Time to Say Goodbye” and other classics.

Robin (“Blurred Lines”) Thicke, Martina McBride and Gloria Estefan have promised to take the stage.

Jones and Kristofferson are slated to make appearances alongside Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, “Sopranos” actor Steve Schirripa, Siegfried and Roy.

Auction items may set you back a few Kardashian ransoms, such as having lunch with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, and meeting Mariah Carey.

Take a guess at how much money the few, remaining tickets are for this tabled and seated spectacular. Nope, you’re wrong. They’re $1,500 each (via Poweroflove@keepmemoryalive.org).

But that’s because the cause is pressing and financially challenging. The internationally acclaimed Brain Center serves many patients in need, runs clinical trials, and researches cures for wicked diseases.

Bocelli and his wife Veronica will be honored for their charity work. They run AndreaBocelliFoundation.org, which addresses poverty, illiteracy, and communities in distress.

Over the years, the great Italian tenor and I have found we communicate better by email than phone, due to the humor of our language barriers.

So here are some fascinating things I found out in an email exchange I did with the generous Bocellis, who have been together 13 years and have a daughter (plus two sons from his first marriage).

The couple’s fast-paced lives (she’s his manager) can sap their energy.

“We sometimes do feel really tired if not totally exhausted,” they emailed.

But their enthusiasm in music and “solidarity” has never failed them, as they tirelessly search for harmony in art and family.

“We are bearers of a message,” they said.

“We have all been called to evangelize, that means to behave according to our conscience. But also to be evangelized, that is to follow the example of those who are more docile to the word of God which is written in fire in everybody’s conscience.”

Veronica Bocelli feels “very lucky” to stay as much as possible with “the man I love and who is able to stand me.”

“We have shared now, for more than 13 years, our private and professional life, every day around the clock.”

FYI, she’s a real manager. She earned a university degree in management of music and performing arts.

She doesn’t seek the kind of attention she’ll get at events such as this. She prefers to “work in the shadows.”

“My legs start shaking even when I simply have to bring the (thank-you) flowers!” she wrote.

Andrea Bocelli has been approached to go into politics — “proposals were not lacking,” and he considers serving Italy an honor — but he regards music as his “mission.”

“I believe that an artist should speak to the hearts of everybody, regardless of everyone’s political ideas.”

I asked Veronica if she’d go into politics, but she said she’s too busy as a mother, wife and manager.

“Besides, I am totally incompetent on the matter,” she wrote. “Quite often, it is my husband who cares to ‘update’ me, in order to overcome my indifference about it.”

I told them it must be cool to have hung out with popes, presidents and entertainers.

They said fame “is not a value in itself,” but public figures are often great at many things

“Especially in the arts, we have often come to think that when you are really ‘great,’ you are also ‘great’ in small things, and you do not become ‘great’ just by chance.”

They also pointed out popes are not merely famous but are “figures that for us believers represent the highest religious authority.”

“They are men of God; they are superior spirits and represent the brightest bridge between earthly existence and the transcendent.”

As for the Ruvo Center, the Bocellis extolled the “miracle of love, intelligence, and generosity that is the project conceived by Larry and Camille Ruvo.”

They said the Andrea Bocelli Foundation similarly focuses on taking actions to improve people’s lives, such as financing hospital construction in impoverished places and working with MIT on solving disabilities.

What else do they want to tell you?

“Ideally, we would like to squeeze in a big grateful hug for all the readers, and tell them once more that we feel very grateful for the love we, regularly, receive.”

Me too, dear readers.

Contact Doug Elfman at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. Find him on Twitter: @VegasAnonymous