“A Voice You Could Recognize in Two Notes”: Remembering Luciano Pavarotti

On October 12, the great Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti would have turned 90. His voice was extraordinary – essentially lyric, though he did wander into dramatic waters with roles like Otello – and it came with a seeming ease that suggested natural musicianship, singing from the heart rather than the head. He seldom strayed from the Italian repertoire, excelling in La bohème, Rigoletto, L’elisir d’amore, I Puritani, Tosca, Un ballo in maschera, and La fille du régiment (a rare French role). Like many of his Italian tenor forebears, he sang lighter repertoire with joy, often ‘crossing over’ into fairly uncharted territory with pop and rock musicians for his War Child charity concert. I heard him live many times — here is a trio of such encounters.

April 11, 1977

I was just 16, and still a novice when it came to opera (I’d seen La traviata and, in retrospect rather adventurously, Il coronazione di Poppea). A couple of friends suggested we go to London for a few days and attend the Covent Garden Proms. The Midland Bank (now HSBC) sponsored a week of performances for which the Royal Opera House removed all the seats from the stalls – in those days it was carpeted – and several hundred people would sit on the floor to see an opera for, I think, 50p. The only downside (aside from attending an opera that lasted about five hours) was queuing outside the opera house all day if you wanted the best place to sit; we favoured the back of the stalls so there was something resembling a backrest. The opera was Puccini’s Tosca with Raina Kabaivanska in the title role and Peter Glossop as Scarpia. I remember a woman next to us in the queue wearing an “I love Pavarotti” T-shirt, and I had no clue who Pavarotti was. A few hours later, such ignorance was a thing of the past, and I heard the Great Man in the flesh. That open-throated lyricism was utterly extraordinary, and I was mesmerised by his voice – one that could be identified in about two notes. Cavaradossi was a role in which Pavarotti excelled: it didn’t require much by way of energetic stage movement, but Puccini had created some of the most glorious music for what is a particularly intense work. “E lucevan le stelle,” sung just before his execution, is one of the most perfect tenor arias ever written, and Pavarotti knew exactly how it should go. A voice had insinuated itself into my memory and it is still lodged there.

July 7, 1990

By now I was working for Gramophone and was invited to an outdoor concert held in the Caracalla Baths in Rome. It was the eve of the first match of the 1990 FIFA World Cup, and, for the first time, Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras would appear together on the same stage. Carreras brokered this deluxe lineup; Pavarotti and Domingo had hitherto been rivals in the way, perhaps, that Callas and Tebaldi were a generation or two before. Zubin Mehta conducted a huge orchestra drawn from the opera houses in Florence and Rome. The setting – a historic thermal bath complex dating back centuries – was magnificent. Decca was on hand to record the occasion for audio and video release.

I remember arriving early while Pavarotti was still rehearsing. As the sole exclusive Decca artist of the trio, he’d had a long relationship with the company’s engineers, and James Lock was clearly looking after the sound the audience heard, as well as what went onto tape. When the show began, history was made – the mood was joyous, and the three singers were all in fine voice, each very different. Pavarotti gave us his signature aria, “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s Turandot, which was then reprised with each tenor trying to outdo the others in embellishments. Somehow, Pavarotti avoided any sense of competitiveness, and his larger-than-life personality won the evening for many people (the subsequent recording changed classical music forever – it remains the largest-selling classical release of all time and spawned a further thirty-three concerts by The Three Tenors).

July 30, 1991

By now I was editor of Gramophone, and I was invited to an outdoor concert in Hyde Park in central London. Diana, Princess of Wales, was a friend of Pavarotti and was seated in the front row surrounded by a host of VIPs, including Prime Minister John Major and his opera-loving wife Norma, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, and actor Michael Caine. Pavarotti, with the Philharmonia Orchestra and his regular conductor Leone Magiera, was housed in a Greek-theatre-style set, which was just as well because almost as soon as the concert started, the heavens opened and it rained with hardly a break for the remainder of the performance.

Pavarotti, ever the charmer, dedicated the aria “Donna non vidi mai” from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut to the Princess, translating the title as “I have never seen a woman like that.” Despite the appalling weather, the tenor was in good form, enjoying the occasion as the showman that he undoubtedly was (you can clearly hear the rain on the subsequent recording). The two arias from Tosca were sensitively performed, the voice less sweet – not surprisingly – than fourteen years earlier. The big aria from Luisa Miller, done with drama and his enviable diction, is a fine performance.

There were many other occasions, including I Lombardi at The Met in New York, a Verdi Requiem at Wembley Arena with Gustav Kuhn and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in March 1994, and with Deborah Voigt in Un ballo in maschera conducted by Edward Downes in 1995. I’m glad to have heard him in his prime!

He will be remembered by millions for different reasons: as the larger-than-life, archetypal Italian tenor singing “Nessun dorma”; for opera buffs, a lyric tenor of exquisite poise and honeyed tones; and, for those who knew him well, a simple man who was at his happiest surrounded by old friends, reminiscing over a large plate of pasta that he’d probably cooked himself.