As winner of the 1994 Newcomers section at the Sanremo Festival, he was invited to return the following year, entering the main competition with "Con te partirò" and finishing in fourth place.[30]
The song was included in his album Bocelli which was produced by Mauro Malavasi and released in the spring. His third album, Viaggio Italiano, was released in autumn.[30] Bocelli sang "Miserere" and "Funiculì, Funiculà" with guitarist John Miles.[30] In Belgium, "Con te partirò" became the best-selling single of all time.[31]
In 1996, Bocelli was invited to sing a duet with English soprano Sarah Brightman at the final bout of German IBF World Light-Heavyweight boxing champion Henry Maske. Brightman, a friend of Maske, approached Bocelli after she heard him singing "Con te partirò" whilst she was dining in a restaurant. Changing the title lyric of the song to "Time to Say Goodbye", they re-recorded it as a duet with members of the London Symphony Orchestra and sang it as a farewell for Maske. The single debuted atop the German charts, where it stayed for fourteen weeks. With sales nearing three million copies, and a sextuple platinum award, "Time to Say Goodbye" eclipsed the previous best-selling single by more than one million copies.[30] He topped the Spanish singles chart in 1996 with a duet with Marta Sanchez, "Vivo Por Ella", the Spanish version of "Vivo per lei", recorded with Giorgia for the Romanza album.
The same year, Bocelli recorded "Je vis pour elle", the French version of "Vivo per lei", as a duet with French singer Hélène Ségara. Released in December 1997, the song became a hit in Belgium (Wallonia) and France, where it reached #1 on the charts. To date, it is the best-selling single for Ségara, and the second for Bocelli after "Time to Say Goodbye". On 3 March he appeared in Hamburg, Germany, with Sarah Brightman to receive the ECHO music award for "Best Single of the Year".[30]
In August, he appeared at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, Italy, and then at the World Youth Festival in Paris, where he again sang in the presence of the Pope. In the summer, he gave 22 open air concerts in Germany, as well as an indoor concert in Oberhausen on 31 August. In September he performed in concert at the Piazza dei Cavalieri in Pisa for the home video A Night in Tuscany(Italian: una notte nella Toscana) with guests Nuccia Focile, Sarah Brightman and Zucchero. On 14 September in Munich, Germany, he received an ECHO Klassik "Best seller of the year" award for his album, Viaggio Italiano.[30][32]
Back in Italy in Bologna on 27 September, he yet again sang before the Pope at the International Eucharistic Congress. On 19 October, he sang at the TeleFood benefit concert held in the Vatican City, and organised by the Food and Agriculture Organization to raise awareness about world hunger. On 25 October he received a Bambi award, an annual television and media prize awarded by the German media company Hubert Burda Media, in the Klassik category in Cologne, Germany.[30]
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