To learn Italian first listen to operas. For example, in I Pagliacci, "Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto... Or, In La Boheme, "Che gelida manina, se le lasce riscaldar..." And don't forget Andrea Bocelli in Con Tia Volare, "Quando sono solo sogno l'horizonte e mancan' le parole.." Not only will you learn some Italian, but you will hear beautiful music at the same time.

I am a fan of Fabrizio De Andrè. I use his songs and the songs of others to learn. This is how: I find his songs on the internet and I get the MP3s from friends. I then get the lyrics. I translate the song and I make a vocabulary list. Then then listen to the song with the Italian and my English translation. I read to song to myself trying to understand the Italian without looking at the vocab list. When I know the vocabulary, I listen with only the Italian lyrics. I also listen to the song in the car, at home, and while walking using my MP3 player. Eventually, I can understan most or all of the song without the lyrics in front of me. This works so well that if I use an Italian word in a chat that came from a song I have, I can tell you the name of the song!

I do not believe that opera or operettas are of any value in learning Italian. It is not how people speak in Italy. It is also an outdated Italian. It is a waste of time. If you have time to listen to the music while you learn, that's fine. But you can better spend your learning time with other material: current songs that you like (rock, folk, popular, whatever), reading Italian blogs, using the many, many sites that teach Italian, read the Italian forum of wordreference.com, and, if you can communicate enough to be understood, use Skype or a similiar program to find friends and chat using written chat or voice/video chat.

eros ramazzotti is italian and he has beautiful songs. He sings in spanish too but most of his songs are in italian.