Paul Potts' debut album
One Chance was aptly named, capturing the remarkable circumstances of the former phone salesman's rise to fame during his time on the reality competition show Britain's Got Talent. The album's music also fit
Potts' newfound stardom: a mix of light opera, pop, and rock songs given the aria treatment, plus show tunes and Christmas carols, it was designed to appeal to the widest possible audience while nodding to his passion for opera.
Passione,
One Chance's follow-up, indulges
Potts' first love a little more while keeping the populist bent of his debut.
Potts sensitively performs
Puccini's E Lucevan le Stelle and
Chopin's Tristesse, revealing that in the two years since
One Chance, he has become a polished performer who has developed the mostly raw talent he displayed on Britain's Got Talent. Yet
Potts never feels as slick as another
Simon Cowell classical pop creation,
Il Divo, even on "opera-fied" versions of well-known songs like "La Prima Volta" (The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face), which he handles with as much grace as possible, although the overwrought "Senza Luce" (A Whiter Shade of Pale) is not one of
Passione's finer moments. Aside from missteps like this and the similarly overdone "Piano" (Memory),
Passione feels more consistent and cohesive than
One Chance, and
Potts shines on "Un Giorno per Noi" (A Time for Us), the
Hayley Westenra duet "Sei con Me" (There for Me), and "Mamma," which allows him to show off some of the subtler shades in his voice. Now that he's had his chance,
Passione suggests that
Potts is coming into his own.