Luciano Pavarotti - The Great One, dies
by GEORGETTE GOUVEIA
Luciano Pavarotti, who died today at his home in Modena, Italy, of pancreatic cancer at age 71, was the Babe Ruth of opera, a natural whose outsize talent and personality transcended his profession to place him in the pantheon of popular culture.
"I think his legacy is bringing opera to the masses," says Marion J. Caffey, who was inspired by Pavarotti and his "Three Tenors" amigos José Carreras and Placido Domingo to create the "Three Mo' Tenors." "Hundreds of millions of people never heard an opera but for Pavarotti."
His willingness to share the stage with such pop performers as Bono, George Michael and the Spice Girls, Caffey adds, enabled him to deliver "a cross-section of popular music."
Pavarotti was, Helena Matheopoulos writes in her insightful book "Divo" (1986), "the first to understand, manipulate and exploit, aided by an expert, well-oiled publicity machine, the American yen for "hype"; to begin giving recitals in stadiums, parks and other such mass-audience venues far removed from the conventional opera house and concert hall; to make best-selling records of popular tunes that broke all sales records for a classical artist; to appear on television chat shows, lead the New York Columbus Day parade on horseback and do many of the things normally expected of film and pop stars."
He could not have done this, however, without that crystalline lyric tenor and a charisma to match, experts say.
"For pure beauty of sound...I don't think there was a better singer, tenor or otherwise," says Jacque Trussel,chair of voice and opera at the Conservatory of Music in Purchase College's School of the Arts.
"He is known for having perhaps the best vocal technique of any opera singer," says Dan Montez, general director of the Taconic Opera in Peekskill. "His flawless technique raised the bar on tenors throughout the world, making easy high C's mandatory. He was known as the 'King of the High C's,' because of his ability to repeatedly hit the high note, full chest, with effortlessness, as he did when he resurrected operas like 'La Fille du Régiment' ('The Daughter of the Regiment') by Donizetti, which he did with Joan Sutherland. This opera features a single aria ('Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!') with nine high C's, whereas the ever-popular 'La Bohème' has only one in the entire opera."
Though his performance as the irrepressible Tonio in the Metropolitan Opera's 1972 production of "La Fille" earned a record 17 curtain calls, Pavarotti did not think high notes the be-all and end-all.
"Top notes are like the goals in football," he said in "Divo: Great Tenors, Baritones and Basses Discuss Their Roles." "If you can do them, fine. If not, no matter. You can still be a great tenor without the high C. Caruso didn't have it....Neither did Tito Schipa....He had something far more important, 20 times more important than high notes - a great line."
That capacity to sing legato - to phrase an aria the way a Shakespearean might shape a soliloquy - was something Pavarotti honed in his native Modena where he was born on Oct. 12, 1935, the son of Fernando Pavarotti, a baker who sang tenor in church choirs as well as the local opera chorus.
The senior Pavarotti introduced his son to his singing groups, including the Rossini Chorus of Modena, which won the top prize at the International Choirs' Festival in Llangollen, Wales, in 1955, spurring the 20-year-old Pavarotti to become a professional singer. After six years of painstaking study, supported by jobs as an assistant schoolteacher and insurance salesman, Pavarotti made his professional debut in Reggio Emilia on April 29, 1961, as the ardent but jealous poet Rodolfo, whose tragic passion for the consumptive seamstress Mimi drives Puccini's soaring "La Bohème."
Rodolfo would prove a talisman for the tenor throughout the 1960s and '70s, as he made his debuts at Covent Garden, La Scala, the San Francisco Opera, the Met and the Paris Opéra in this role. (He would also sing it on the first "Live From The Met" telecast in 1977.)
"Like me, Rodolfo is a romantic," Pavarotti says in "Divo." "He speaks a universal lovers' language as true of yesterday as of today and tomorrow and which can be understood even on the moon."
The moonstruck Rodolfo, for which the tenor would don an alternately playful and earnest attitude, also pointed up Pavarotti's flaws as an actor, experts say.
"He is not known for his acting ability like Placido Domingo," Montez says.
Indeed, his 1982 foray into feature films, "Yes, Giorgio," in which he played (what else?) an opera singer who romances his throat specialist (Kathryn Harrold), had movie critics crying "No, Luciano!"
"He wasn't a great actor," says Trussel, who was at the Lyric Opera of Chicago with Pavarotti in the early '80s. "But he let his voice do the acting."
Pavarotti defended his portrayals, saying you don't need to be an Olivier to be an opera singer - in his day, you didn't - just as he refuted a claim by ex-manager Herbert Breslin in his 2004 book "The King & I" that he was a poor sight singer. Nevertheless, he never exhibited the musicianship or range of musical talents of Domingo, the rival who has also proved himself as a conductor and opera director. As with Babe Ruth, Pavarotti's singular genius seems to have eclipsed all his other gifts.
The only quality that could match the size and luster of his voice was the generosity of spirit he exhibited onstage. With arms spread as wide as his smile - a gesture punctuated by the white dinner napkin that reportedly became a trademark at his 1973 recital debut in Missouri - Pavarotti projected a blend of warmth and humility that was catnip to audiences and media alike.
"Charisma is one thing you've got or you don't," says Trussel, who remembers Pavarotti as a "very affable, kind" colleague. "You just saw him and you liked him."
That generosity was no act. In the early 1980s, he established The Pavarotti International Voice Competition for young singers, with whom he'd perform. In 1990, he and Domingo joined forces to "welcome back to life" Carreras after his battle with leukemia. The first of their Three Tenors' concerts - staged at the Baths of the Roman emperor Caracalla on the eve of the 1990 World Cup final - was a high-fiving sensation, with the recording becoming the best-selling classical album of all time. Subsequent Three Tenors' concerts continued to parallel the World Cup finals in Los Angeles in '94, Paris in '98 and Yokohama in 2002.
It was the Los Angeles performance that moved Marion J. Caffey to found Three Mo' Tenors.
"After the Three Tenors segued from the classical to the Broadway repertoire, the idea came to me," says the impressario, who grew up listening to Pavarotti as well as Mahalia Jackson. "They've always impressed me as opera powerhouses. They don't pretend to be Broadway artists. I thought, 'Wow, maybe there's room for three classically trained African-American tenors to segue from opera to jazz."
The first cast of Three Mo' Tenors performed music in seven different styles; the second, 10.
Says Caffey of Pavarotti: "He's done on a grand scale what I'm trying to do....He's bridged a gap."
But even the King of the High C's encountered some rough ones. There were frequent injuries and surgeries that prompted frequent performance cancellations. In the mid-'90s, the world was taken aback when Pavarotti left his wife of more than 30 years, the former Adua Veroni, for his assistant, Nicoletta Mantovani, a woman younger than his three daughters. The couple married in 2003 and have a daughter, Alice, 4. Pavarotti is also survived by his children from his first marriage - Lorenza, Cristina and Giuliana.
It may be fair to say, however, that no challenge has been as great as the one he faced in July 2006 when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and underwent surgery. The subsequent treatment interrupted the farewell tour he had announced at the end of 2004.
Five months before being diagnosed with cancer, Pavarotti had sung "Nessun Dorma," his signature aria and the tenor national anthem, at the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Turin, earning the biggest ovation of the night. The aria from Puccini's "Turandot" is about a man who would risk life itself for love - a metaphor perhaps for the singer himself.
"As a human being, I have good will for people which must, I suppose, be counted as a quality, because they, in turn, are full of good will towards me," Pavarotti said in "Divo." "It boils down to a mutual exchange of love."
Bounce back
Luciano Pavarotti, who died today at his home in Modena, Italy, of pancreatic cancer at age 71, was the Babe Ruth of opera, a natural whose outsize talent and personality transcended his profession to place him in the pantheon of popular culture.
"I think his legacy is bringing opera to the masses," says Marion J. Caffey, who was inspired by Pavarotti and his "Three Tenors" amigos José Carreras and Placido Domingo to create the "Three Mo' Tenors." "Hundreds of millions of people never heard an opera but for Pavarotti."
His willingness to share the stage with such pop performers as Bono, George Michael and the Spice Girls, Caffey adds, enabled him to deliver "a cross-section of popular music."
Pavarotti was, Helena Matheopoulos writes in her insightful book "Divo" (1986), "the first to understand, manipulate and exploit, aided by an expert, well-oiled publicity machine, the American yen for "hype"; to begin giving recitals in stadiums, parks and other such mass-audience venues far removed from the conventional opera house and concert hall; to make best-selling records of popular tunes that broke all sales records for a classical artist; to appear on television chat shows, lead the New York Columbus Day parade on horseback and do many of the things normally expected of film and pop stars."
He could not have done this, however, without that crystalline lyric tenor and a charisma to match, experts say.
"For pure beauty of sound...I don't think there was a better singer, tenor or otherwise," says Jacque Trussel,chair of voice and opera at the Conservatory of Music in Purchase College's School of the Arts.
"He is known for having perhaps the best vocal technique of any opera singer," says Dan Montez, general director of the Taconic Opera in Peekskill. "His flawless technique raised the bar on tenors throughout the world, making easy high C's mandatory. He was known as the 'King of the High C's,' because of his ability to repeatedly hit the high note, full chest, with effortlessness, as he did when he resurrected operas like 'La Fille du Régiment' ('The Daughter of the Regiment') by Donizetti, which he did with Joan Sutherland. This opera features a single aria ('Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!') with nine high C's, whereas the ever-popular 'La Bohème' has only one in the entire opera."
Though his performance as the irrepressible Tonio in the Metropolitan Opera's 1972 production of "La Fille" earned a record 17 curtain calls, Pavarotti did not think high notes the be-all and end-all.
"Top notes are like the goals in football," he said in "Divo: Great Tenors, Baritones and Basses Discuss Their Roles." "If you can do them, fine. If not, no matter. You can still be a great tenor without the high C. Caruso didn't have it....Neither did Tito Schipa....He had something far more important, 20 times more important than high notes - a great line."
That capacity to sing legato - to phrase an aria the way a Shakespearean might shape a soliloquy - was something Pavarotti honed in his native Modena where he was born on Oct. 12, 1935, the son of Fernando Pavarotti, a baker who sang tenor in church choirs as well as the local opera chorus.
The senior Pavarotti introduced his son to his singing groups, including the Rossini Chorus of Modena, which won the top prize at the International Choirs' Festival in Llangollen, Wales, in 1955, spurring the 20-year-old Pavarotti to become a professional singer. After six years of painstaking study, supported by jobs as an assistant schoolteacher and insurance salesman, Pavarotti made his professional debut in Reggio Emilia on April 29, 1961, as the ardent but jealous poet Rodolfo, whose tragic passion for the consumptive seamstress Mimi drives Puccini's soaring "La Bohème."
Rodolfo would prove a talisman for the tenor throughout the 1960s and '70s, as he made his debuts at Covent Garden, La Scala, the San Francisco Opera, the Met and the Paris Opéra in this role. (He would also sing it on the first "Live From The Met" telecast in 1977.)
"Like me, Rodolfo is a romantic," Pavarotti says in "Divo." "He speaks a universal lovers' language as true of yesterday as of today and tomorrow and which can be understood even on the moon."
The moonstruck Rodolfo, for which the tenor would don an alternately playful and earnest attitude, also pointed up Pavarotti's flaws as an actor, experts say.
"He is not known for his acting ability like Placido Domingo," Montez says.
Indeed, his 1982 foray into feature films, "Yes, Giorgio," in which he played (what else?) an opera singer who romances his throat specialist (Kathryn Harrold), had movie critics crying "No, Luciano!"
"He wasn't a great actor," says Trussel, who was at the Lyric Opera of Chicago with Pavarotti in the early '80s. "But he let his voice do the acting."
Pavarotti defended his portrayals, saying you don't need to be an Olivier to be an opera singer - in his day, you didn't - just as he refuted a claim by ex-manager Herbert Breslin in his 2004 book "The King & I" that he was a poor sight singer. Nevertheless, he never exhibited the musicianship or range of musical talents of Domingo, the rival who has also proved himself as a conductor and opera director. As with Babe Ruth, Pavarotti's singular genius seems to have eclipsed all his other gifts.
The only quality that could match the size and luster of his voice was the generosity of spirit he exhibited onstage. With arms spread as wide as his smile - a gesture punctuated by the white dinner napkin that reportedly became a trademark at his 1973 recital debut in Missouri - Pavarotti projected a blend of warmth and humility that was catnip to audiences and media alike.
"Charisma is one thing you've got or you don't," says Trussel, who remembers Pavarotti as a "very affable, kind" colleague. "You just saw him and you liked him."
That generosity was no act. In the early 1980s, he established The Pavarotti International Voice Competition for young singers, with whom he'd perform. In 1990, he and Domingo joined forces to "welcome back to life" Carreras after his battle with leukemia. The first of their Three Tenors' concerts - staged at the Baths of the Roman emperor Caracalla on the eve of the 1990 World Cup final - was a high-fiving sensation, with the recording becoming the best-selling classical album of all time. Subsequent Three Tenors' concerts continued to parallel the World Cup finals in Los Angeles in '94, Paris in '98 and Yokohama in 2002.
It was the Los Angeles performance that moved Marion J. Caffey to found Three Mo' Tenors.
"After the Three Tenors segued from the classical to the Broadway repertoire, the idea came to me," says the impressario, who grew up listening to Pavarotti as well as Mahalia Jackson. "They've always impressed me as opera powerhouses. They don't pretend to be Broadway artists. I thought, 'Wow, maybe there's room for three classically trained African-American tenors to segue from opera to jazz."
The first cast of Three Mo' Tenors performed music in seven different styles; the second, 10.
Says Caffey of Pavarotti: "He's done on a grand scale what I'm trying to do....He's bridged a gap."
But even the King of the High C's encountered some rough ones. There were frequent injuries and surgeries that prompted frequent performance cancellations. In the mid-'90s, the world was taken aback when Pavarotti left his wife of more than 30 years, the former Adua Veroni, for his assistant, Nicoletta Mantovani, a woman younger than his three daughters. The couple married in 2003 and have a daughter, Alice, 4. Pavarotti is also survived by his children from his first marriage - Lorenza, Cristina and Giuliana.
It may be fair to say, however, that no challenge has been as great as the one he faced in July 2006 when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and underwent surgery. The subsequent treatment interrupted the farewell tour he had announced at the end of 2004.
Five months before being diagnosed with cancer, Pavarotti had sung "Nessun Dorma," his signature aria and the tenor national anthem, at the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Turin, earning the biggest ovation of the night. The aria from Puccini's "Turandot" is about a man who would risk life itself for love - a metaphor perhaps for the singer himself.
"As a human being, I have good will for people which must, I suppose, be counted as a quality, because they, in turn, are full of good will towards me," Pavarotti said in "Divo." "It boils down to a mutual exchange of love."
Bounce back
