In Saturday’s Times Magazine (I read this on paper and can find no link to it), Italian Tenor Andrea Bocelli talks about “an extraordinary mentor”:

My father was the bank deputy in our Tuscan village, and the manager he worked for was Amos Martelacci, the single most influential person I’ve met in my entire life.  Self-taught and from a poor family, he was obsessed by travel, spoke several languages, had amassed and actually read tens of thousands of books and was advocate to the whole community, forever available, a source of wisdom and encouragement to all.  He came into my life when I was 18 and studying for my final exams at school [Bocelli would go on to graduate in law from the University of Pisa] and the difference he made to me was profound.  He passed on to me a love of literature, particularly French and Russian.  He taught me to doubt apparent certainties, questioning everything.  And while he lived to see, and was made happy by, my success, he viewed it with detachment, showing me in turn how to accord it the correct value.  Was I his surrogate son [Martelacci was married but had no children]? Perhaps, but if so, he had many others, for he was kind to everyone.  I named my eldest boy Amos in his honour.  You can imagine how I felt when he [Martelacci] died on my 40th birthday.