This unofficial site features his current and recent events and tours
Review of Tony Hadley at Teatro Verdi, Gorizia, Italy
14th May 2011
When this show was announced, I looked into the logistics of getting there as sometimes a show abroad isn't much more expensive than a show in the UK for me and it is always nice seeing different parts of the world.
This show ticked all the boxes, an airport nearby with a regular bus service to the town, a nice hotel near the venue and tickets available online, I also thought a nice bit of sunshine would do me good.
Tina would be coming with me and we met up at Stansted airport for the flight to Treiste to arrive early evening, the day before the show to give us a bit of time to explore the town and enjoy a short break away. We wondered if this would be the flight that the band would be on, but this was not to be so.
A short walk away from the bus station was our hotel and an even shorter walk up the road to the venue. The next day we had a nice explore of Gorizia and we also went to the nearby Italian/Slovenian border and took photographs of ourselves with one foot in each country.
We had internet at the hotel and found out that the flight that Tony and the band were due to arrive into Venice on was delayed in London by four hours, so instead of arriving around noon, they didn't arrive until after 5pm. But least they had arrived. We collected our tickets from the box office and saw the band arriving. Tony was quite surprised to see us.
We took our seats in the front row of the balcony, this was quite far back and not our usual spot of a few feet away from Tony, but it was interesting to watch a show from there as it was a different perspective.
Despite their delay, the band were on top form. A notice in the foyer had said the concert would last 1 hour and 45 minutes, and as this is a longer time than usual, I knew there were going to be different songs than when I saw them in Exeter and probably have quite a few Spandau numbers as they were very big in Italy.
Of course I'd heard all the songs before but it was nice to hear my favourite Spandau song ‘Round and Round' which he doesn't do very often and U2's ‘With or Without You' for the first time since I had heard him sing it in Esbjerg in 2008. He also sang ‘I'll Fly for you' which was the song that broke Spandau in Italy .
Tony cannot speak much Italian and told the audience this in Italian. I'm not sure how much of his banter they understood but they were very appreciative of him. Whether it is not the done thing to stand at a seated concert in Italy , so most of the time people were clapping and dancing in their seats sitting down. It was a pity that they didn't stand until the very end as I would have liked to have stood as being front row of the balcony, I had to sit on the edge of the seat and look through the railings so my view of Tony wasn't cut in half by the rails.
I don't think the Italians understood Tony's way of doing an encore, where he just says I'm not bothering to go off, you just cheer and we will carry on for another couple of songs. When the show was over, the band had bowed in their usual way, about half of the audience downstairs stayed in the auditorium chanting ‘Tony', ‘Tony'. I don't think they realised that the encore had happened, or whether they thought he may come back for one more song if they shouted loud enough. The roadies were starting to pack up the equipment and they were still waiting, so they drew the stage curtain to make them realise the show was over.
The Italian fans were very pleased that Tony had come to do a gig in Italy and we were happy that we were able to talk to Tony afterwards. The weather had been lovely in Gorizia, but when we woke up on the Sunday morning it was raining really heavily, so different from the lovely sunny weather we had in the previous two days. It seemed that as soon as Tony left, he had left them with some British weather.
Denise 15/5/11