Much loved and celebrated tenor, Andrea Bocelli, is famously blind but perhaps less-known is that Bocelli suffered from congenital glaucoma from a very young age. Already at great risk for vision loss because of his glaucoma, the Italian opera singer went totally blind at 12 years old after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

“As a child I was very lively and uncontrollable, I loved playing football and one day during a match, I was hit violently in the face with a ball on my right eye, the only one which I could see light and colour with,” he told The Telegraph. “The doctors tried to cure me with various operations and they even used leeches but there was nothing that could be done.”

Bocelli said he learned to play the piano through braille. “When I was five, my mother discovered that the only way to comfort me with my glaucoma was to play classical music on the record player.”

At 34, he was spotted by Luciano Pavarotti and the rest, as they say, is history. To date he has recorded 13 solo albums and sold more than 70 million copies. He’s sung for Queen Elizabeth II, various presidents and the last two Popes!