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Giant of opera falls silent after 71 years

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Friday Sep 7 2007

From the humblest of fans to political figureheads, the world mourned yesterday for Luciano Pavarotti, the man who wanted to be a professional footballer, who trained as a teacher but, blessed with a golden voice, became the most popular operatic tenor of all time.

The singer died at his home in Modena aged 71 at 5am yesterday. He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer.

Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, who performed together with Pavarotti in The Three Tenors concerts for more than 10 years, led the tributes to the singer, whose outstanding voice and unrivalled charisma propelled opera to a new level of worldwide popularity.

Around the world, opera houses were also planning tributes to the man whose huge girth -- at one stage his weight rose to 280lb -- earned him the nickname "Fat Lucy".

At the Royal Opera House in London, where Pavarotti last performed in 2002 to a rapturous send-off, a minute's silence was held during a dress rehearsal and staff hung his portrait in the foyer for fans to lay flowers beneath it. The company is to dedicate its new production of Donizetti's 'L'elisir D'amore', which Pavarotti sang at Covent Garden in 1990, when it opens on November 13.

Though Pavarotti -- born to a baker father and a mother who worked in a tobacco factory -- was a star of the opera stage as early as the 1960s, he became a household name after his spine-tingling rendition of 'Nessun Dorma' -- an aria from Puccini's opera 'Turandot' -- was chosen as the anthem of the 1990 football World Cup in Italy.

On the eve of the final in Rome, he appeared in concert at the Baths of Caracalla in the city with Domingo and Carreras and The Three Tenors were born.

In a series of concerts around the world, the trio took opera into stadiums and demonstrated to millions that classical singing could be as thrilling as pop or rock.

Carreras said: "It's a great loss. He was without doubt one of the most important tenors of all time."

Domingo said: "I always admired the God-given glory of his voice -- that unmistakable special timbre from the bottom up to the very top of the tenor range."

In the singer's home city, huge crowds gathered outside Modena Cathedral to pay tribute as Italy mourned its favourite son.

For most Italians, Pavarotti was a perfect embodiment of their ideal man: he loved food, he loved football, he loved women and he sang beautifully.

Pavarotti's funeral is to be held in Modena's Romanesque cathedral on Saturday. His body was taken from his villa yesterday afternoon, to lie in state at the cathedral.

Virtuoso

Debate will go on about whether Pavarotti was the best of the three tenors -- and whether he was the equal of the great Neapolitan virtuoso, Enrico Caruso.

For many purists, Pavarotti's voice had deteriorated from his golden years of the 1970s.

Added to that, he was never the greatest of actors and his size made him more wooden still and more prone to health problems.

But, if stagework became more difficult, The Three Tenors helped him tap into a new mass audience. He recorded more than 100 albums, enjoying sales of more than 100 million.

In 1990, 'The Essential Pavarotti' became the first classical album to top the British music charts, and in 1998, a Three Tenors concert in France attracted a TV audience of two billion.

He became close to Princess Diana and he famously appeared before the princess and her husband in a rain-soaked concert in Hyde Park in London in 1991.

Renowned for giving his time to young singers, he also had a reputation for tantrums.

His former agent and publicity manager, Herbert Breslin, wrote a book about him after an acrimonious split in 2002, describing the opera legend as a monster.

He scandalised some fans in 1996 when he left his wife, Adua, and three grown-up daughters -- after 35 years of marriage -- for his secretary, Nicoletta Mantovani, whom he married in 2003. He had one child from this second marriage.