Alva Review-Courier -

PISA, Italy (AP) — Tenor Andrea Bocelli has brought down the house at Pisa's Teatro Verdi by performing with an unusual conductor: a robot.

The white, two-armed YuMi robot, designed by the Swiss company ABB for factory assembly lines, led Bocelli and the Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra in Verdi's "La Donna e Mobile" on Tuesday night at Pisa's inaugural International Robotics Festival.

Bocelli, who is blind, follows the music and is sensitive to the variabilities brought to a performance by different conductors.

He declared YuMi a capable conductor, saying the robot had been "programmed well."

The...