gave him tapes of opera music, who treated him to dinner, who came to meet his parents. At Barragues' birthday in January 2001, friends gathered at a casual outdoor restaurant for hot dogs and avocado shakes. Nelson watched as they gave him small gifts, ashamed that he had come empty-handed. Suddenly he began to sing — "Recondita armonia" from "Tosca." Pouring his heart into the powerful Puccini aria, his voice soared into the night. The crowd fell silent. Even the waiters stopped serving. Says Barragues: "It was the most memorable birthday gift I had ever received." ___ The day Nelson left Angola was one of the saddest of his life. His elderly parents clung to him, tears streaming down their faces, as if they knew they were hugging him for the last time. It was June 2001. A few days earlier Barragues had called excitedly from Madrid, where he had spent several months on family leave. He had managed to secure two auditions for Nelson, one with the Royal Conservatory of Music and the other with Carlos III University of Madrid. They will be very difficult, Barragues told Nelson. Singers from all over the world would be vying for the spots. Barragues barely recognized the emaciated figure who stepped off the plane. Nelson's face was gaunt, his head bald. He looked like an old man. Doctors diagnosed him with early stage tuberculosis and said Nelson needed nourishment as much as medicine. He also needed dental surgery — some of his teeth were so rotten they bled. Barragues' heart sank. The auditions were in a week. How could Nelson possibly sing in this condition? Nelson knew how. He thought of his parents, of the sisters who were sick and the brother who had coughed up blood before dying in front of him. He thought of all the other young men in Angola who could only dream of such an opportunity. He sang with such passion the judges cheered. And so began what Nelson calls the "crazy time" of his life — an immersion in a country and culture and way of life so different from the one he had left that there were times he wondered if it was all a dream. There were early missteps: Nelson wore a Real Madrid soccer T-shirt to his first opera, Rossini's "La Cenerentola" — clueless about how out of place he looked in the lavish elegance of the Teatro Royal. But there was also inspiration. Placido Domingo happened to be performing in Madrid at the time, singing in Richard Wagner's "Die Walkure." Friends of Barragues arranged an introduction. Trembling, the young tenor sang "Una furtiva lagrima" — as his hero accompanied him on piano. "You have a beautiful voice," Domingo told him. "You need to study hard to develop it." And that is what Nelson did, soaking up the language and culture, losing himself in studies and song. People marveled at how quickly he adjusted. It was, said one Spanish friend, as if Nelson felt the need to grasp every opportunity in case his luck might somehow disappear. In Angola, Nelson had always sung with abandon, belting out songs with all his might. In Spain, he would learn to pace his voice, not push it. He would learn to view his voice as a fragile and complex instrument that had to be cared for. He would learn the language of opera: bel canto, tessitura, passagio. Nelson possesses an infectious sense of joy, along with an easy-going nature and winning smile that draws people to him. He made friends on the soccer field, in coffee shops and dance clubs. He charmed the public relations people at the Teatro Royal into slipping him opera tickets whenever they had a free seat. He persuaded the university president to get him a pass for Real Madrid soccer games. He sang for the king. When Barragues returned to Madrid a year later for the annual university concert, he could hardly believe the poised young man who strode on stage in a tuxedo. There must have been a thousand people in the auditorium. "Nelson! Nelson!" they chanted. ___ Barragues broke the news over the phone: Nelson's mother, who had done so much to shield her youngest son from the war, at one point sending him to a seminary for safety, had died. Nelson had to ask the president of the university for money to pay for her funeral. He ached with homesickness and uncertainty. He was tortured by nightmares about the brothers and sisters who had died and those he had left behind. "It was very hard," he says. People wonder all the time: Is that why he sings with such feeling, such pathos? Do the sorrows of his life inspire the crying in his voice? "Of course, if I am singing about death, I think about my family, the ones who died," Nelson says. "But usually I just feel the song, whether it's happy or sad. And when I feel it, the voice just flows." And how it flows. "Nelson started to sing and I practically fell off my chair," said Julian Rodescu, a 58-year-old bass, a professional opera singer who lives in Philadelphia and now spends more time teaching than singing. "Once in a while you come across THAT voice, THAT talent, that honest-to-goodness great natural sound." Rodescu, who first heard Nelson sing in Genoa in 2004, quickly became a mentor, friend and vocal coach. It was Rodescu who arranged for Nelson to audition at the prestigious Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia in 2005. But Nelson was sick with a cold and he performed poorly. For a time he studied in Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J., but his visa ran out and he was forced to return to Spain. There followed a couple of frustrating and aimless years when Nelson questioned everything about himself, and his voice. Failing to get into the Academy of Vocal Arts had deeply shaken his confidence: It was the first time critics had not swooned over his singing. Maybe his voice was not as good as everyone said. Maybe he should forget trying to becoming an opera star and just start singing jazz. Friends told him how lucky he was, reminding him of all he had escaped, and all he had achieved. His years in Spain had transformed him into a sophisticated, educated, polished young man who had traveled all over Europe, who was fluent in five languages, whose voice was growing richer all the time. But Nelson didn't feel lucky. "I felt lost," he says. Nelson grew up in a deeply religious home. He has an abiding faith that God has blessed him with his talent, and that if he takes care of it, God will take care of him. And so, when he received a call from some American opera friends, whom he had met through Rodescu, he was sure God had rescued him. They had arranged an audition with the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. They paid for his plane ticket. Suddenly Nelson's dream was alive again. ___ Classes, rehearsals, competitions, performances — thrilled to be studying again, Nelson hurled himself into his hectic new life with jubilation. And, as he had done in Spain, he won friends and admirers at every turn. "Nelson, our rock star!" jokes his friend Joey Baker, as they stroll through campus, while a smiling Nelson hugs and high-fives every student who passes. A soprano begs him to come to her recital that weekend. A baritone asks if they can practice a duet. Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of Nelson. He gives willingly — tutoring a freshman mezzo-soprano on reaching her high notes, singing the spiritual "Give Me Jesus" as a favor for a friend in church, introducing friends to his "special place" a little homespun Brazilian restaurant where the cooks hail him in Portuguese as if he is a brother. "Nelson has this huge talent, but he is also a really good person," says his voice teacher, Wayne Rivera. "And I think that humanity, the way he cares about people, comes out in his singing." In Connecticut, Nelson expanded his repertoire, working on his technique and stamina. He racked up accolades in recitals, winning competitions and attending master classes, where opera stars work with young singers on improving skills. One of his first was with Marilyn Horne, the legendary American mezzo-soprano famous for her mastery of demanding Rossini arias. International vocal coach Herbert Burtis was in the audience, and he was mesmerized. "Then a 25-year-old tenor from Angola came on stage and blew us all away with his rendition of Tosti's 'Mattinata,'" Burtis wrote. "He was a little afraid of the high B Flat at first, but I could hear that that can be worked out with practice. ... It was a magnificent performance." At times Nelson seems genuinely astonished, humbled even, by the praise and attention. "It is because the songs are so beautiful," he says. "If you sing them properly people connect, you make them feel something very special." And yet his eyes dance with delight when he knows he has a crowd in his thrall. At a recent concert in South Windsor, Conn., Nelson sang 11 compositions with such melting perfection — beginning with Handel's "Ombra mai fu" and ending with Tosti's "Aprile" — that the audience simply erupted in ecstasy. People just wanted to touch him. "You filled me with love," one woman said. "I felt transported. God bless y