You’re now getting a new breed of people like Il Divo and Andrea Bocelli and I think that’s why people feel less intimidated by classical music than they once did.

Jenkins is commenting on the early-21st-century “classical crossover” phenomenon, in which classically trained voices and repertoire are packaged through pop marketing, accessible arrangements, and celebrity branding. By citing Il Divo and Andrea Bocelli—artists who brought operatic timbres into mainstream radio and arena venues—she suggests that audiences who once associated classical music with elite institutions and strict etiquette now encounter it through familiar, low-pressure formats. The remark also implicitly positions Jenkins’s own career within this democratizing trend: crossover performers act as cultural intermediaries, lowering barriers of taste and intimidation while potentially reshaping what the public understands as “classical.”