Pavarotti: From soccer dreams to opera stardom
ROME: Like most Italian boys, Luciano Pavarotti used to dream of
being a soccer star. Instead, he rose to opera stardom and entranced
stadium audiences with his singing voice rather than his soccer skills.
Pavarotti died in the early hours of Thursday. He was 71.
The rotund, black-bearded tenor, regarded by many as the greatest of
his generation, shot to fame with a stand-in appearance at London's
Covent Garden in 1963 and soon had critics gushing about his voluminous
voice.
Luciano Pavarotti |
Perhaps his biggest gift to the music world was when he teamed up
with Spanish stars Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras at the 1990 soccer
World Cup in Italy and introduced operatic classics to an estimated 800
million people in TV coverage around the globe.
Sales of opera albums shot up after the gala concert in Rome's Baths
of Caracalla and strains of Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" became as much a
feature of soccer fever as the usual more raucous stadium chants.
Earlier in his life, Pavarotti's parents wanted him to have a steady
job and for a while he worked as an insurance salesman and teacher.
He started singing on the operatic circuit and his big break came
thanks to another Italian opera great, Giuseppe di Stefano, who dropped
out of a London performance of "La Boheme" in 1963.
Covent Garden had lined up "this large young man" as a possible
stand-in and a star was born.
In 1972 he famously hit nine high C's in a row in "Daughter of the
Regiment" at New York's Metropolitan Opera, which he referred to as "my
home". Thirty years later, Pavarotti was still one of the highest paid
classical singers even though his public performances were fewer and
further between.
Farewell tour
Medical problems beset "Big Luciano" in the final years of his
career, forcing him to cancel several dates of his marathon worldwide
farewell tour.
In July 2006 he underwent surgery in New York for pancreatic cancer
and retreated to his villa in the Italian city of Modena. He said he
hoped to resume the tour soon but had to cancel his first planned public
appearance a few months later.
"I have had everything in life, really everything. And if everything
is taken away from me, with God we're even and quits," he said in one of
his last interviews.
On the few occasions he performed in the past decade, Pavarotti was
criticised for his lack of mobility, sometimes seating his large frame
centre stage to belt out the arias.
He was also criticised for dropping out of operas diva-like at the
last minute and for failing to hit all the notes, prompting critics to
say his voice no longer had the stamina to perform more than a few
pieces at a time.
In 1992, he admitted miming to recorded music during what was
supposed to be a live concert because he had
Pavarotti performs during the opening ceremony of the Torino
2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy on February 10, 2006.
(Reuters) |
not prepared. He offered to pay the BBC the full cost of the
broadcast.
But fans never stopped praising him. "Pavarotti is the last great
charismatic figure of our times. Lovers of 'bel canto' feel a sort of
endless admiration for him," singer Andrea Bocelli said in July 2007.
In 2003, Pavarotti married Nicoletta Mantovani, an assistant 34 years
his junior and younger than his three daughters, after an acrimonious
divorce from his wife of 37 years. As Nicoletta was bearing twins, the
pregnancy ran into complications and their son Riccardo was stillborn.
Distraught at losing his only son, Pavarotti lavished his love on his
new daughter Alice and recorded his first solo album in 15 years for her
this time soft pop rather than opera calling it "Ti Adoro" (I Adore
You).
Pavarotti refused to sing at home, "not even in the shower", and said
he could not bear hearing recordings of himself because as a
perfectionist he heard all his wrong notes.
"My idea of a nightmare is being invited to dinner and someone
putting on a recording of me. It would put me right off my food," he
once told an interviewer.
Pavarotti was known fondly as "Fat Lucy" but reducing his round girth
was a battle he kept losing. Weighing about 20 stone (175 kg) brought on
the need for knee and hip operations and put a strain on his voice.
Other strains came from his complex finances, which caught the tax
man's attention. In 2000, he settled a four-year dispute and paid more
than $12 million in Italian back taxes.
Pavarotti hit nine effortless top notes in the first aria, a feat
which saw the audience erupt in a standing ovation and also earned him
the epithet "King of the high C's".
Despite his success, he never fully learned to read music, preferring
to memorise his roles. As a result he mastered only one at a time,
leaving him with a surprisingly limited repertoire for a singer of his
stature.
He also managed to shock purists with his appearances in live
concerts, sometimes alongside pop musicians.
In 1991 a crowd of 150,000, including the Prince and Princess of
Wales, braved the rain and cold in London's Hyde Park to hear him sing.
The previous year Pavarotti had hit an even wider audience, when his
performance of the aria "Nessun Dorma", from Puccini's "Turandot," was
chosen as the theme music for the 1990 Football World Cup, hosted by his
native Italy.
Among his best-known initiatives in his later years were his
appearances with two other leading singers, Jose Carreras and Placido
Domingo, as the "Three Tenors", and the annual "Pavarotti and Friends"
concerts in his home town of Modena.
The events saw him performing with rock stars from Elton John and
Eric Clapton to Zucchero and even the Spice Girls, to raise money for
children in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Pavarotti's success also attracted the
attention of society columns.
He recorded the famous Three Tenors CDs with Domingo and Carreras,
helping to popularise the genre of opera the world over.
(Reuters, AFP)
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