Space Tycoon
09-06-2007, 09:12 PM
So passes another great artist. In a sea of pop mediocrity, he helped bring the classics to the masses.
Public adored Pavarotti's common touch (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/07/wpav207.xml)
"The Italian tenor cuts a curious figure in the world's eyes," wrote the authority on the singing voice, J B Steane. "Part romantic, part ridiculous; idol of the gallery, bête noire of the highbrows; the voice of passion, the voice of the ice-cream man."
Nobody since Enrico Caruso's heyday a century ago has so happily fulfilled that complicated stereotype as Luciano Pavarotti, who became a worldwide household name in 1990 when the World Cup made an anthem of his recording of Nessun Dorma.
As part of the accompanying jamboree, he then joined with Placido Domingo and José Carreras as The Three Tenors - for a period one of the hottest musical properties on the planet.
advertisementPavarotti was the joker in the trio. The public adored his enormous bulk, wide grin and trademark white handkerchief as much as they thrilled to his wonderfully lucid, even-toned and open-throated singing.
Like Caruso, he had the common touch and knew how to play the publicity game.
But although the big bucks and mass adulation rolled in throughout the long final phase of his career, one shouldn't forget that Pavarotti had by then become a mere shadow of the singer he had been as a young man.
The true glory of his art is preserved in the recordings he made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, often in partnership with the Australian soprano, Joan Sutherland, who gave him an invaluable leg-up when he was only a promising tyro from Modena.
In the lighter, high-lying bel canto repertory which he sang with her in those days - Elvino in La sonnambula, Tonio in La Fille du régiment, Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor - he communicated with a freshness, élan and spot-on clarity that has seldom been equalled and probably never surpassed.
His technical virtuosity was a joy: he didn't miss a syllable or a note, and he made it all seem effortless.
Later his voice became darker and heavier, and by the 1980s he had taken to the more soulful repertory of Verdi and Puccini, in which he gave sumptuously lyrical interpretations of Il trovatore and Un ballo in maschera, Tosca and La Bohème.
Yet marvellously fluent as these were, he was never as convincing playing the outright romantic as was his eternal rival Placido Domingo; as an actor, he was awkward.
He wasn't the easiest or most reliable of colleagues - Sutherland, Renata Scotto and the Metropolitan Opera boss, Jo Volpe, were among several who made plain their displeasure at his unprofessional behaviour.
Although he could on occasion be great fun and immensely charming, a streak of canny, immovable stubbornness dominated his personality - like every long-shining star, he knew how to get his way.
Where he ranks artistically in the operatic pantheon is more debatable.
He sang on instinct rather than intellect and, outside the Italian repertory, he faltered. He had none of Domingo's versatility across languages and cultures, and little of the subtle musical intelligence of Tito Schipa, Carlo Bergonzi or Alfredo Kraus.
But like Caruso - and Beniamino Gigli, and Jussi Bjorling - he had something vital which the others lacked: the common touch, which reaches across the footlights and can hit a mass audience with visceral immediacy.
Many wonderful young tenors have come to the fore since his prime, but Pavarotti was unique and cannot easily be replaced.
Happily, the irresistible splendour of his singing is preserved on the superbly engineered recordings he made for Decca, the company to which he remained loyal for 40 years - a bequest to posterity which will assure him a place in the annals of operatic legend."
.
Public adored Pavarotti's common touch (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/07/wpav207.xml)
"The Italian tenor cuts a curious figure in the world's eyes," wrote the authority on the singing voice, J B Steane. "Part romantic, part ridiculous; idol of the gallery, bête noire of the highbrows; the voice of passion, the voice of the ice-cream man."
Nobody since Enrico Caruso's heyday a century ago has so happily fulfilled that complicated stereotype as Luciano Pavarotti, who became a worldwide household name in 1990 when the World Cup made an anthem of his recording of Nessun Dorma.
As part of the accompanying jamboree, he then joined with Placido Domingo and José Carreras as The Three Tenors - for a period one of the hottest musical properties on the planet.
advertisementPavarotti was the joker in the trio. The public adored his enormous bulk, wide grin and trademark white handkerchief as much as they thrilled to his wonderfully lucid, even-toned and open-throated singing.
Like Caruso, he had the common touch and knew how to play the publicity game.
But although the big bucks and mass adulation rolled in throughout the long final phase of his career, one shouldn't forget that Pavarotti had by then become a mere shadow of the singer he had been as a young man.
The true glory of his art is preserved in the recordings he made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, often in partnership with the Australian soprano, Joan Sutherland, who gave him an invaluable leg-up when he was only a promising tyro from Modena.
In the lighter, high-lying bel canto repertory which he sang with her in those days - Elvino in La sonnambula, Tonio in La Fille du régiment, Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor - he communicated with a freshness, élan and spot-on clarity that has seldom been equalled and probably never surpassed.
His technical virtuosity was a joy: he didn't miss a syllable or a note, and he made it all seem effortless.
Later his voice became darker and heavier, and by the 1980s he had taken to the more soulful repertory of Verdi and Puccini, in which he gave sumptuously lyrical interpretations of Il trovatore and Un ballo in maschera, Tosca and La Bohème.
Yet marvellously fluent as these were, he was never as convincing playing the outright romantic as was his eternal rival Placido Domingo; as an actor, he was awkward.
He wasn't the easiest or most reliable of colleagues - Sutherland, Renata Scotto and the Metropolitan Opera boss, Jo Volpe, were among several who made plain their displeasure at his unprofessional behaviour.
Although he could on occasion be great fun and immensely charming, a streak of canny, immovable stubbornness dominated his personality - like every long-shining star, he knew how to get his way.
Where he ranks artistically in the operatic pantheon is more debatable.
He sang on instinct rather than intellect and, outside the Italian repertory, he faltered. He had none of Domingo's versatility across languages and cultures, and little of the subtle musical intelligence of Tito Schipa, Carlo Bergonzi or Alfredo Kraus.
But like Caruso - and Beniamino Gigli, and Jussi Bjorling - he had something vital which the others lacked: the common touch, which reaches across the footlights and can hit a mass audience with visceral immediacy.
Many wonderful young tenors have come to the fore since his prime, but Pavarotti was unique and cannot easily be replaced.
Happily, the irresistible splendour of his singing is preserved on the superbly engineered recordings he made for Decca, the company to which he remained loyal for 40 years - a bequest to posterity which will assure him a place in the annals of operatic legend."
.