Home > People Index Page > Luciano Pavarotti
On a High Note
by Nancy Wolfson
The rain beats relentlessly and the wind howls on a nasty autumn
afternoon in New York. Luciano Pavarotti, a self-described homebody,
is not home. A few hours ago, he went to visit a friend in the
hospital.
Pavarotti's secretary, Nicoletta, becomes concerned about his
uncommonly long absence. She phones his driver. No one
answers. Nicoletta summons Veronica, the opera singer's full-time
masseuse, who is ensconced in the adjacent apartment. They compare
agendas: both have the same cell phone number for the
driver. Nicoletta redials, and again no one picks up. We are in
Pavarotti's Central Park South apartment, huddled around his desk.
The desk is in a catercornered position at one end of a large,
light living room with views of Central Park. A cluttered shelf behind
the desk holds a small wooden humidor and plastic Groucho Marx
glasses. On the wall above it hangs a photograph of Giacomo Puccini,
composer of La Bohème, the first opera Pavarotti ever performed
on stage, and, next to it, a portrait of Giuseppe Verdi, the composer
of Rigoletto, the second opera Pavarotti did. There is also a
photograph of Caruso, the original supertenor (who was the highest
paid performer in the world when he died in 1921), and a small note,
handwritten in Italian, which says, "With a most sincere wish for a
big, big success. Affectionately, Enrico Caruso." (Caruso died 14
years before Pavarotti was born--the note was written to a former
director of the Metropolitan Opera and willed to Pavarotti by the
former editor of Opera News.)
In front of the desk is a black Baldwin grand piano. It is covered
with snapshots of Pavarotti posing with: Princess Diana, Nelson
Mandela, Gerald and Betty Ford, Bob Hope, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, Herb
Breslin (his manager of 30 years) and his parents. The largest,
not-yet-framed photo on the piano is a recent one of the 61-year-old
singer embracing his 27-year-old secretary, Nicoletta, her head
resting on his shoulder. Even though he is not here, his
larger-than-life presence permeates the place.
The telephone rings, and it is Pavarotti, calling from the
car. "I am underwater," he says, exaggerating slightly. "There is
wind, rain, even ice water, and traffic...it is incredible. We are
only five blocks from home but it may take a half hour to get there."
Ten minutes later Pavarotti enters with his personal assistant,
Tino, whom he affectionately calls "Ciccio," in tow. The tenor's brow
is wet, as it often is, this time either from the rain, the exertion
or a combination of the two. He wears white jeans and a
cotton-candy-pink shirt, unbuttoned at the top. (All of his shirts
must be custom-made to fit his circa 300-pound frame.) He replaces
the pink, yellow and green Hermès silk scarf wrapped around his
neck with a white cotton towel, which he uses to mop his brow.
Taking his place behind the desk, Pavarotti asks Nicoletta,
whose lips are tinted a shade darker than his shirt, to bring some
water and a grissino (bread stick). Last night he performed Andrea
Chenier on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, and tonight he
is scheduled to fill a seat in the audience, for fellow tenor Placido
Domingo's performance of Fedora, a lesser-known opera written by
Umberto Giordano, the composer of Chenier. Due to the weather, he
calls to cancel.
"Buon ora," (his own variation on "good afternoon") he says,
the accent on the upbeat, to Herb Breslin. "I don't think I go out
tonight--the weather is terrible. We will try another night. With
better weather. I would really like to see it because I have never
seen Fedora--can you believe that? Please call them and let them
know. Thank you."
Bowing out seems rather painless for Pavarotti, who has been
criticized for canceling many a scheduled performance (as well as
interviews, photo shoots and other appearances). The performance
cancellations are almost always due to feeble health or, more
specifically, ailing vocal chords.
It was another tenor's cancellation (Giuseppe di Stefano's) that
gave Pavarotti one of the early breaks in his career: the opportunity
to fill in for di Stefano as Rodolfo in La Bohème at London's
Covent Garden Royal Opera in 1963. He ended up doing almost the whole
run, and the Royal Opera staff nicknamed him "Lucky."
One of the luckiest overtures made at Covent Garden was by Joan
Sutherland and her husband, the conductor, Richard Bonynge. They were
so taken with the tall 28-year-old tenor that they signed him
immediately, two years in advance, for an Australian tour with a stop
in Miami. The 1965 Miami stop was his U.S. debut. After that, he sang
in San Francisco and Chicago. In the fall of 1968, he contracted a
brutal case of the Hong Kong flu, and canceled out of a schedule of 10
New York performances of La Bohème halfway through the second
night. Disappointed at having aborted his first New York Metropolitan
Opera stint, he flew back to his home in Modena, Italy, and was sick
in bed for almost three months.
In 1972, four years after the ill-fated Met debut, he dazzled the
New York crowd, bringing it to its feet after his nine-high-C aria in
a Met production of La Fille du Régiment. Since that night, the
resounding triumphs have far outweighed the disappointments in
Pavarotti's 36-year career.
"You can be disappointed by a friend, a woman, a political party,
an organization. I have had all of these. But they have been few, and
I have had so many other big things that I am a privileged person,"
the maestro says, exchanging the towel at his neck for the
Hermès scarf. He covers his neck at all times, irrespective of
the season, to protect his instrument.
"I know I am a privileged person," he continues. It is four days
before his 61st birthday. "I have realized even more than I ever even
dreamed of." Among his proudest accomplishments: the Luciano Pavarotti
International Voice Competition, a competition of young opera singers
he established in 1982 (he performs with the winners); a horse
competition and concert he has done in Modena every year since 1990
called the Pavarotti International-CSIO San Marino; the Three Tenors
concerts--he has done 14 to date and plans at least four more; the War
Child foundation, which is expected to raise more than $4 million to
build a children's music center in the war-torn Bosnian city of
Mostar; and the concerts with pop stars such as Sting, Elton John,
Liza Minelli, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton and Bono.
Luciano Pavarotti was born in Modena, a small city in northern
Italy, on Oct. 12, 1935. From the start, cigars and food were
connected in his life. His mother, Adele, worked long hours in a
Toscano cigar factory and his father, Fernando, was a baker. (Both
are "sensationally alive.") They lived in a 17-family apartment
building on the outskirts of Modena. His grandmother, Nonna Giulia,
took care of him.
Luciano's father, a "very fine" tenor with inconquerable stage
fright, loved vocal music. At home he played records of the great
tenors of the era--Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli and Giovanni
Martinelli. When he was five, Luciano would close the door to his room
and sing "La Donna é Mobile" (the famous aria from Rigoletto)
at the top of his lungs. That same year he plunked himself down in a
child's chair in the courtyard of the apartment house, played a toy
mandolin and sang full out for all the neighbors. They tossed candy
and nuts in approval.
After that, approval was harder won, but it prevailed. He joined
the Corale Rossini, the local opera chorus, of which his father was
also a member. When the young Pavarotti was 19, the group went to
Wales for an international choral competition and came back with first
prize. Around the same time he began studying voice with Arrigo Pola,
a professional tenor who lived in Modena. Pola gave the lessons gratis
because he saw potential in Luciano and because the Pavarotti family
didn't have the means to pay.
The aspiring tenor, svelte in those years, earned a living as an
elementary school teacher (the profession his father chose for him)
and then as an insurance salesman. He was so successful at selling
insurance that he was offered a position managing a branch office in a
nearby town. Urging him to take the job, his boss said, "As a singer
you will undoubtedly die of starvation, while in insurance you will
have bread for life." Pavarotti seems to have been destined for bread
either way. He finally abandoned insurance because "all that speaking
from my sales talks was damaging my voice. Talking can be harder on
the voice than singing." He's still a good talker.
In 1961, at age 25, Pavarotti won the Achille Peri international
singing competition. The prize was a chance to perform in a bona fide
opera production. The date of that production was April 29, 1961, in
the northern Italy city of Reggio Emilia. The opera was Puccini's La
Bohème. "The best thing about winning that competition was
proving to myself, more than anyone else, that I could perform an
entire opera. It was not until that performance on that day in 1961
that I realized that I would really be an opera singer," he recalls 36
years later.
Rodolfo, the lovelorn Bohemian artist, has become his signature
role, a favorite among the 30 he has sung. Even closer to his heart is
the character of Nemorino in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore. "He
[Nemorino] is a peasant-poet-dreamer, a bit nearer to my own
personality," says Pavarotti. "Despite the fact that I was born under
the [astrological] sign of Libra [balance], I am a person who
calculates little and dreams a lot. With the grandissimi advantages
and the grandissimi disadvantages. But, the advantages are 90 percent
and the disadvantages, 10 percent. So it's worth living as a dreamer."
If Pavarotti is not calculating, his manager certainly is. Herb
Breslin was an adman before managing Pavarotti, and Michael Walsh,
Time magazine's former music critic, calls Breslin's methods "a
bread-and-circuses approach to art." A virtuoso breadwinner and
marketer, Breslin is credited with masterminding Pavarotti's one-man
shows and "arena" concerts around the world. While Pavarotti relies on
Breslin's ability to calculate, many attribute the singer's longevity
to the fact that he has paced his own career, selective about when to
sing which roles and careful never to push his voice--renowned for a
pure, open quality that presents the words with clarity-- beyond its
limit. He does push the Casanova envelope. Famous for being a flirt,
he was once interviewed on television by Pia Lindstrom, Ingrid
Bergman's daughter. She made some reference to a critic's comment that
Pavarotti's vocal chords were kissed by God. "I think He kissed you
all over," Pavarotti replied without missing a beat.
Just five months after that first performance of La Bohème
in 1961, he got married. It wasn't exactly unexpected--he and Adua
Veroni had been engaged for eight years. Within six years they had
three daughters: Lorenza (now 34), Cristina (32) and Giuliana
(30). Adua, originally a school teacher from Modena, eventually
started an agency for young singers called Stage Door Opera
Management, with which she is no longer connected. She was involved
with her husband's career until 1996, when they separated.
There had been scores of rumors over the years. Often seen with
other women, the tenor had remained a family man, at least on the
record. Last year when he left Adua after 35 years of marriage, it was
for his secretary, Nicoletta Mantovani. Also from Modena, she is 34
years his junior. The press, particularly in Italy, has lambasted him
for it. For his part, Pavarotti has said little about the issue,
simply stating that he is in love. Famously protective of his privacy,
Pavarotti politely dismisses the issue when I try to get him to
elaborate.
In his second autobiography, Pavarotti: My World (written with
William Wright, Crown 1995), Pavarotti wrote, "I love Ballo [Un Ballo
in Maschera--The Masked Ball, a Verdi opera] for many reasons.... The
tenor character, Riccardo, is a good man who is deeply in love with
his friend's wife. I sympathize with him, not because I have ever been
in love with a friend's wife, thank God, but because I know how
powerful love can be and how it can make a man do things that he knows
are wrong." Perhaps that is one of the disadvantages of being a
dreamer.
"I care a lot about the people in my life--the ones who were my
friends even before I started to sing, and have remained close all
these years," says Pavarotti. "These are the friends in whom I have no
doubt, whereas I might have doubts about the friends who have
approached me since I've become a singer." Although he is one of the
most outgoing, visible singers alive, he values his privacy. His
greatest fear has always been "some-thing happening to the people that
I love. And there are a lot of people that I love."
He's also loyal to Villigers, the Swiss cigars he's been smoking
since he bought them on a whim at a London airport about 20 years
ago. He turns to the humidor behind his desk, opens it and pulls out a
Villiger. "These are my cigars--very simple. Gentle and dry, they are
perfect for me, because they are just the right length and not too
heavy for my delicate throat."
His cigars are the only small-scale component about the
larger-than-life star. The big man has huge appetites for big
audiences, big houses, big cars, big meals and big deals. He is big
box-office fodder and makes big bucks.
He's been known to smoke a big Cuban cigar or two. At a New York
Metropolitan Opera gala celebrating the opening of the '93-'94 season,
Pavarotti sang Otello and Domingo sang Act I of Valkyrie. At the party
afterwards, the renowned tenor José Carreras made a surprise
appearance. In his pockets were Cohibas for all three tenors. "We had
a big smoke on the Grand Tier!" exclaims Joseph Volpe, the general
director of the Met, who is an aficionado of Cohiba Esplendidos and
Partagas.
Pavarotti likes to smoke in the summer, during his annual August
vacation at his sprawling beach house in Pesaro, a town on the
Adriatic Sea. "After a meal, a cigar relaxes me. And, I like the
smell," he says, dragging out the word "smell" as he might sustain a
high note.
The smell was what got him started, but it was from a pipe rather
than a cigar. "In 1962, in the second year of my career, I had just
finished performing in Budapest, where I boarded a train for Vienna. I
was to sing there next. I was seated alone in a compartment. At the
second stop, a well-dressed man got on and entered my compartment. He
had two pieces of luggage: a large one and a small 24-hour bag. He sat
down, opened the small one and asked if I'd mind if he smoked a
pipe. 'Well, I am a singer,' I protested. 'I just finished singing and
I'm going to Vienna to sing the day after tomorrow.' He got up to
change compartments, but I asked him to stay, because there was
something very charming about him. After a while he asked if I'd like
to see the pipe. He opened the smaller bag and it was full of 10 or 12
different pipes. The smell was wonderful. He was going to Vienna for a
pipe competition. They give you a quantity of tobacco, and the longer
you can keep it lit, the better. Very, very interesting," says
Pavarotti, who is fascinated with competitions and endowed with a
propensity for winning them.
"The Hungarian said, 'Promise me you'll try smoking sometime.' I
told him I couldn't possibly smoke because I was a singer. 'But you
don't inhale a pipe,' he said. The first thing I did when I got off
the train in Vienna was buy a pipe and some beautiful tobacco flavored
with Cognac. I went to my hotel room and lit up. But [smoking a pipe]
was a little complicated because you can't smoke at the table--it's
too messy. So I thought I'd try cigars--there was less preparation and
fuss. I've smoked them ever since."
While he may be consistent, he is not predictable. He tells of an
episode that occurred in May 1987 while shooting a PBS special called
"Pavarotti Returns To Naples." The show involved the tenor exploring
various famous scenic locations in and around Naples. One scene put
the big man in a small boat, rowing alone in the Bay of Naples while
singing "O Sole Mio" (which he had pre-recorded). It was a key
scene, meant to embody the quintessential image of Neapolitan song:
the fisherman on the water making beautiful music, solo.
On the final day of shooting, Pavarotti had a bad knee. When the
time came to shoot the rowboat scene, it was almost dusk and the air
was "dangerously damp." With a concert scheduled the next day, he was
not willing to risk getting sick and doing further damage to his knee
by getting into the cramped boat. To accommodate the star, the
director found a heavyset double who could do the distant shots in the
Bay of Naples. He asked Pavarotti to get into the boat for one quick
closeup. The singer refused, and there was a long, tense pause.
Suddenly, Pavarotti plunged into the boat, took a cigar out of
his jacket pocket, lit up and told the director to dismiss the double,
resolving to do the whole scene himself. "If I was going to take
chances with my throat, I might as well have all my forbidden
pleasures at the same time," he recalls. Another forbidden
pleasure--food--was broken out at the big buffet celebration minutes
after the scene was in the can.
There is no concealing the fact that eating is one of the
tenor's principal pleasures. He also loves to cook. "I'm not a great
cook," he maintains, with characteristic precision on the subject of
greatness. Pavarotti is careful to distinguish between what is good
and what is great. "Great" sopranos Mirella Freni and Joan Sutherland
recall many a memorable pasta meal produced by the maestro in
makeshift kitchens all over the world.
During the Metropolitan Opera season Pavarotti tends to cook at
home and relax at meals with his immediate entourage, so on this fall
day in New York there is a large rectangular table and four chairs set
up in the living room. On the wall behind the table hangs a
predominantly green painting of a big river surrounded by trees. It is
the Secchia River, which flows through Modena. Painted by a Modenese
artist named Venturelli, Pavarotti commissioned the picture in 1986 so
he could have a view of Modena from New York.
Renowned for its balsamic vinegar and its famous tenor, Modena is
in Emilia Romagna, the region considered to be the gastronomic heart
of Italy (it includes the city of Parma, known for its cheese and
prosciutto). The regional style of cooking is hearty, heavy on the
cheese, meat and cream sauces.
Alternatively, Tuscan cuisine, another Pavarotti favorite, uses
olive oil as the basis for almost everything. "Olive oil is so
incredibly healthy--as a digestive," he says, sitting at his desk and
munching on a Pepperidge Farm Milano cookie. "I love it and I use it
despite the fact that it's the most caloric thing in the world!" He
has five bottles in his New York kitchen: Monini, Colavita, Badia a
Coltibuono, Bertolli and a tall, slender bottle of Ferragamo (a
limited-production oil made in the Florentine hills by the fashion
family). Monini is his favorite "because it has more taste and
texture." With the exception of the Ferragamo bottle, a gift from his
friend Wanda Ferragamo, the other oils are rather common and
accessible.
This is not surprising, for Pavarotti has remained true to his
small-town roots, generally opting for "taste and texture" over quiet
refinement. "I am not a boiled potato--I am a fried potato," he says,
staccato, for emphasis. Maybe he means he's more snap-crackle-pop than
mellow yellow. His daring is visible in his colorful wardrobe of loud
printed shirts and scarves.
It is evident in his wine preferences as well. Although he is a
"Brunelistà" (appassionato of Brunello di Montalcino,
especially vintage 1990), he tends to drink lambrusco. Regarded by
some as the "poor relation" of Italian red wines, Pavarotti likes its
lack of snob appeal. He maintains that at a dinner party, if there are
50 wines from which to choose, lambrusco is always the first to
go. "My wine [lambrusco] is a very wild, unrefined sparkling wine, the
only red that must go in the refrigerator. It is a fragile wine,
extremely sensitive to atmospheric changes, so it doesn't travel or
age very well."
"There are two ways to get a good lambrusco. You can make it at
home, which I did for many years with my grandfather. We bought the
grapes, using some from here and some from there, and then I squeezed
them with my feet. But because it is so fragile, it is difficult to do
it well," he says. About 25 years ago he bought a vineyard in Modena,
but sold it shortly thereafter. "Wine must be made by people who know
how to make it. Like the opera must be done by people who know how to
sing," the tenor says.
Hence the second, and Pavarotti's preferred way to get a good
lambrusco, is through one of the local cooperatives. "If you are a
member of an organization of local wine producers, you can buy some of
their limited-production wines. I'm not a member anymore, but I get
them through a friend who is," he says. "I've been buying the same
lambrusco from Correggio [a town between Reggio-Emilia and Modena]
since 1965."
Other passions have been soccer, horses and tennis. Knee and ankle
injuries preclude Pavarotti from playing sports anymore, so these days
he has begun practicing yoga. For a brief time in the '70s, painting
was a very powerful passion. "One night in 1978 I was dreaming about
color. I woke up at four in the morning and painted until three in the
afternoon, when the painting was finished. This was really a rapture,"
he says, pointing to a picture hanging over the fireplace in his New
York living room. It is a bright-colored rendition of a fishing
village, Portofino, in winter. There are no people, just beached
boats, buildings, a cupola and a multihued blue sky that fills most of
the canvas. The style is naïf. "That is who I am [naïf],"
Pavarotti says. "I did about 38 acrylic paintings in the space of five
months, mostly in hotel rooms. And then I stopped." The painting is
signed "Lupa" (the first two letters of his first and last name),
which also means "she-wolf" in Italian.
It is appropriate that his initials are LP, as in Long Playing. He
has made more than 90 records, five of them Grammy winners. Carreras,
Domingo and Pavarotti (Decca), recorded live at the first Three
Tenors concert at Rome's Baths of Caracalla in July 1990, has become
the best-selling classical album of all time. The telecasts and TV
specials are too numerous to count. He's made a movie and given his
name to a fragrance. On Forbes magazine's most recent annual "Top 40"
highest paid entertainers list, Pavarotti placed 28th, with an
estimated total gross earnings (before taxes) of $25 million in
1996. These are no small potatoes. Forbes described him as "without a
doubt the world's most marketable voice."
"I don't classify myself--I let the others do that," says the
singer. "If you sing all the roles put in front of you, you are a
tenor [as compared to a lyric tenor or a light lyric tenor]. Punto
[period]. If you are also an actor, or a good driver of your voice, if
you have personality and a stage presence, personality in life, you
become something more than a tenor, more than just a voice."
Indeed, Pavarotti has been labeled a "phenomenon." "Popera" is the
term coined by Forbes to describe the mass popularization of opera for
which he is almost singlehandedly responsible. Thanks to his rendition
of the Turandot aria, "Nessun Dorma," he has become the "O Sole Mio"
of opera. "I want to bring people good music and make them happy," he
says, chomping on a thick grissino. "Music, like sport, should be for
everybody."
One fifth of the world's population is a good beginning. The July
1994 Three Tenors "Encore!" concert was broadcast live from Dodger
Stadium in Los Angeles to about 1.2 billion people in some 107
countries. The 1996-'97 World Tour consisted of 12 shows (each tenor
is said to pocket more than $1 million per concert, before
royalties), spanned four continents and played to 650,000 people. The
question, among critics, is to what extent music, and opera in
particular, should be like sport.
Pavarotti, who captivates crowds with his ability to hit the high
notes, has compared the "business of top notes for a tenor" to a
bullfight. "You are not allowed one mistake," he writes with William
Wright in his first autobiography, Pavarotti: My Own Story
(Doubleday, 1981). "I suppose there is something undeniably exciting
about a grown man singing full out those difficult, unnatural high
Cs. It creates a wild, almost animal excitement."
On the evening of July 20, 1996, at New Jersey's Giants Stadium
(77,716 capacity), the pre-concert excitement for another Three
Tenors performance was reminiscent of the anticipation before a
football game. In the stadium parking lot, people began picnicking at
5 p.m., four hours before the concert's scheduled start time. Putting
a new spin on tailgating, stretch limousines parked alongside the
tables-for-12 they'd brought, covered with linen tablecloths, silver,
china and crystal. Typical of the fans' fare: grilled filet mignon and
lobster salad, washed down with Taittinger on ice.
The night sky, notably devoid of stars, was also devoid of noise,
a result of the concert organizers' successful diversion of all normal
air traffic during the concert, establishing it as a "no-fly"
zone. Down on the 21,600-square-foot megastage, Carreras, Domingo and
Pavarotti each warmed up the crowd with a solo. After each tenor
performed, he exited the stage as the next singer entered. They met on
the edge and gave each other a high-five, like triumphant
teammates. "We are friends and we admire each other," Pavarotti
insists. "I'm sorry if people are disappointed by that."
At the half, you could buy a Three Tenors silk scarf for $40, a
watch for $65, a baseball cap for $25 or a glossy program for $15. You
could nibble on Hebrew National hot dogs and popcorn and sip
Budweiser. The Three Tenors package seems strangely reflective of the
wide-ranging preferences of Pavarotti himself.
"My goal is to sing until 2001, to complete 40 years in the
profession," he says, sipping cold mineral water with lemon. In 2001,
he will be 65. "I want to do about three or four new roles, but only
ones that make sense for me. An opera that is new for the theater, and
therefore new for the audience--like the Fedora production at the
Met--would be interesting for me to do. Otherwise, to do an opera not
new for the audience but new for me would put me at a disadvantage,
and I don't like that," he says with a sigh.
Much has been said about his aging, darkening voice. In 1992, he
got caught lip-synching at an outdoor multi-artist pop concert in
Modena, and a few months later was booed when his voice cracked at an
opening-night performance at Milan's La Scala. He hasn't sung there
since. "One time he cracked, but hundreds of other nights he has sung
in a truly divine manner," opines a Milanese La Scala subscriber.
"I am a workaholic now," says Pavarotti. "Since one of my best
friends died a few years ago, I have become more professional. He was
a cousin of my wife's, and he always told me to focus more on being
professional. He told me I would find an incredible pleasure, and he
was right--I have." Despite harsh criticism to the contrary, and
accusations that he is "squandering his talent," those close to the
tenor attest to his hard work ethic.
Pavarotti is booked through 2000. Scheduled for this year: four
Three Tenors concerts in Europe (one was scheduled for Modena on June
17, a benefit concert to raise funds to rebuild La Fenice, Venice's
landmark opera house that burned in 1996), performances of Turandot
and L'Elisir d'Amore during the Metropolitan Opera's 1997-'98 season,
L'Elisir at the San Carlo Opera in Naples, a huge special for
television and a possible deal with Disney. This is an ample workload
for a tenor of any age.
There is also teaching, and the competition for young singers he
sponsors in Philadelphia, for which he hears 2,000 singers every three
years. "I initiated this competition because winning a competition
changed my life, so I know how valuable this can be for new singers,"
he says. "I find myself so patient with these kids. I will do anything
for a singer if I feel there is material to work with."
A few nights later in his dressing room backstage at the Met,
after a performance of Andrea Chenier, there is the usual long line of
starstruck well-wishers. Pavarotti sits on a stool in the center of
the small room. Still in makeup, he wears knickers (the bottom half
of his costume), a red shirt and an oversized printed shawl.
A young man dressed in a suit waits patiently until it is his turn
to shake the big man's hand. He mumbles something and Pavarotti
smiles. The man moves away, and suddenly Pavarotti bellows, "Oh,
yes. I remember your voice very well. I remember what you sang for
me. Where are you singing now?" The young man, flattered at having
been recognized by the star, tells him. As Pavarotti continues to
autograph programs and shake fans' hands, smiling his big, toothy
smile, he gives the young tenor a word of encouragement: "That's
good--at least you're working. Keep it up. Don't give up, it will
come."
One of the most important moments in Pavarotti's life occurred
when he was 12. The great tenor Beniamino Gigli, 57 years old at the
time, was "vocalizing" on the stage in Modena. "I was watching from
below," Luciano recalls, "and when he came down into the audience, I
said, 'I, a contralto now, want to become a tenor. What do you, as a
tenor, think my chances are?'
'Certainly if you are a contralto, you will become a tenor,' Gigli
responded. And then I asked, 'How long did you have to study?' And he
told me, 'My child, I just finished five minutes ago.' He meant,
clearly, if you intend to follow this profession, you will have to
study always, until you don't sing anymore. But I think I will
continue to study, even when I stop singing in public."
Nancy Wolfson is a New York-based writer.
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