Brisbane opera singer who serenades lemons in his Carseldine backyard to make them bigger denies neighbours complain

A friendly Italian opera singer has denied claims that complaints from his neighbors in Brisbane forced him to stop singing in front of his lemon tree at 6am.

Raffaele Pierno, an award-winning tenor, says his Carseldine neighbors love his impassioned singing almost as much as his unusually large lemons, some of which weigh half a kilo and are too big to squeeze.

Mr Pierno, who moved to Australia in 2004, started singing to his citrus during Covid after remembering his Neapolitan grandfather getting a record harvest by doing the same.

He estimates that in the past three years he has harvested four to five times as many lemons as before the corona crisis, all from one tree.

He has also seen his passion fruit crop grow.

“Sometimes I whisper to the tree, I communicate with my trees, I feed them. But I love to sing and I do it with all my heart,” he told Daily Mail Australia

He and his partner have made lemon tarts, lemon tarts, and even lemon-flavored cheese (cottage cheese, ricotta, or caciotta) and given away countless fruits to adoring neighbors.

“Usually my partner makes the pies, but she says the lemons are too big to squeeze,” he said.

So what’s his secret?

“I don’t know why it works, but it does. A professor told me this could be from just giving more C02, or something to do with the tremors of my voice, or just wanting to reach the tree.

“Sometimes I whisper to the tree, I communicate with my trees, I feed them. But I love to sing and I do it with all my heart.’

Mr Pierno said claims by a Queensland media outlet that he has upset his sleeping neighbors must be a misunderstanding because of his thick Naples accent.

“I was shocked when I read it because my neighbors are very supportive of it.”

A woman who had seen him sing “from her window” approached him at the supermarket to say how much she appreciated his voice.

Another woman told him ‘we like it a lot and when friends come over we sit by the gate and listen’.

Some come to listen ‘with a glass of wine or a cup of tea, or a beer, because Aussies like beer’.

Mr Pierno roughly follows the same rules that residents are supposed to follow around the use of lawnmowers – although his voice is probably louder.

He told Daily Mail Australia that his powerful voice is so loud that he won’t start singing until well after 9am.

“When I’m in the backyard, you can hear me on the street, you can hear me 200 or 300 yards away.”

“There is no complaint at all. I get up early in the morning, at 6 o’clock, but I can’t sing at that hour. My voice isn’t warm until half past nine or ten.’

Mr Pierno, who became an Australian citizen in 2009, thinks he could experiment by singing songs by Jimmy Barnes or John Farnham, but he’s not sure how his fruity audience would react.

Mr. Pierno thinks his singing led to some big crops of giant lemons

Contrary to local reports, Mr. Pierno’s singing is popular with the neighbours, especially women. A woman who saw him singing from her window approached him in the supermarket to say so (stock image)

The tree Mr Pierno sings to every day in the Brisbane suburb of Carseldine – after 9:30am

“I don’t know if I’d switch to Jimmy Barnes if the lemons would like it, but I might try one day.”

Mr. Pierno trained at the Conservatorio Domenico Cimarosa in Avellino and was once invited to sing at the Duomo di Napoli, the city’s cathedral.

He has performed as a soloist with the Hunan Province Symphony Orchestra and in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

In 2021, he placed third in Boris Martinovich’s international online voting competition during the Covid pandemic.