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<text>
<title>
(1970s) Opera's Golden Tenor:Luciano Pavarotti
</title>
<history>Time-The Weekly Magazine-1970s Highlights</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
TIME Magazine
September 24, 1979
Opera's Golden Tenor
</hdr>
<body>
<p>Luciano Pavarotti tops the scales in brilliance, bulk and brio
</p>
<p> "Don't you know that the tenor is a being apart...? He
is not a denizen of this world, he is a world in himself."
--Hector Berlioz
</p>
<p> It was 1969. At the San Francisco Opera an Italian tenor
named Luciano Pavarotti was singing the role of Rodolfo in La
Boheme. Suddenly, midway through the third act, the entire
theater seemed to rumble and shudder. Chandeliers began swaying.
Members of the audience stood up in confusion; some bolted for
the exits. "What is happening?" Pavarotti hissed to the prompter
between phrases. "Terremoto--earthquake!" the prompter
breathed back. Pavarotti gripped the hand of his Mimi, Soprano
Dorothy Kirsten, a little more tightly, but kept on singing at
full voice and never missed a beat. The earthquake drew to a
peaceful conclusion and so did the performance.
</p>
<p> Last week Pavarotti was back at the San Francisco Opera,
starring in the season's opening production. Amilcare
Ponchielli's Le Gioconda. Once more there was drama and tumult.
Profound tremors again swept through the house. But the
intervening decade had made an enormous difference. This time
Pavarotti himself was the earthquake.
</p>
<p> No other tenor in modern times has hit the opera world with
such seismic force. At 6 ft. and nearly 300 lbs., "Big P," as
Soprano Joan Sutherland calls him, is more than life-size, as
is everything about him--his clarion high Cs, his fees of
$8,000 per night for an opera and $20,000 for a recital, his
Rabelaisian zest for food and fun. "He is not primo tenore,"
says San Francisco Opera General Director Kurt Herbert Adler,
"He is primissimo tenore."
</p>
<p> Pavarotti is one of those magnetic performers, like Nureyev
in dance and Oliver in theater, who not only please the
cognoscenti but also wow the masses. His LPs reach well beyond
the normal opera market, making him the bestselling classical
vocalist on records today. At any given time over the past 18
months, at least four albums featuring him have been on the
charts. The man in the street, who may care little about opera,
knows Pavarotti as that bearded guy with the boyish grin and the
funny accent on the TV commercial for American Express cards.
Millions have seen Pavarotti's live performances on public
television; the 1978 solo recital from the stage of the
Metropolitan Opera, for instance, or this week's La Gioconda,
which PBS transmitted from San Francisco across the U.S. and by
satellite to Britain and Europe.
</p>
<p> Little wonder, then, that San Francisco treated Pavarotti
as the top attraction in La Gioconda, although the tenor role
is not exactly the lead. Local hostesses vied for his exuberant
presence at their parties. A dealer lent him a Rolls-Royce
Silver Cloud for his seven-week stay. Between socializing and
vocalizing, Pavarotti jetted to Los Angeles for one of his
periodic jousts with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. When he
had free time, he took to the tennis court. A surprisingly
graceful Gargantua, he is quick on his feet and gets about as
much English on the tennis ball as he does into his
conversation. "I gave him the toilet paper," he said of one
opponent, meaning that he took him to the cleaner's.
</p>
<p> As for La Gioconda, it unfolded a Mediterranean saga of a
mysterious letter, bitter rivalries and ominous threats. And
that was only backstage. Pavarotti, who is conscientious and
meticulously punctual when he finally gets down to business,
clashed at rehearsal with his co-star, Soprano Renata Scotto,
over her lateness and somebody's fluffs (whether hers or his was
part of the dispute). They even stopped in mid-aria to exchange
words not found in the libretto. On the day of the gala opening,
Scotto received a letter warning that a claque was planning to
boo her. It was signed "Enzo Grimaldo," the character played by
Pavarotti. Scotto's husband accused Pavarotti of sponsoring the
claque and alerted Adler and the San Francisco police. At the
first sign of trouble, he vowed, his wife would walk off the
stage.
</p>
<p> That night the claque never materialized. Neither, in a
sense, did Scotto's performance. Possibly unnerved by all the
squabbling, she was not at her best vocally or dramatically.
Pavarotti came through splendidly. Playing a 17th century
nobleman who is enmeshed in a conflict with the Venetian
Inquisition, he made bold entrances in full cry. His spacious
second-act aria, Cielo e mar, which used to serve Caruso well,
was traced in long limpid lines that glowed with emotion. His
voice soared out of the big ensembles, seeming to carry the
chorus in to the air with him. At the curtain, Scotto took a
single bow, then retired to her dressing room. Pavarotti came
out with the other principals time after time, spreading his
stevedore arms in an ardent embracing motion to the audience as
they cheered and pelted him with roses.
</p>
<p> His dressing room afterward was besieged by well-wishers,
including visitors from as far away as his home town of Modena
in north-central Italy. Sometimes Pavarotti will make the
supreme sacrifice, receiving fans for hours even when he knows
the last restaurant in town is closing. In San Francisco, he
knew that a giant steak awaited him in the postperformance ball,
so he volubly welcomed everyone in sight. Especially the women.
A true Italian make, he makes it a point of honor to kiss every
female in the same room with him. Cheerful propositions are the
staple of his small talk ("Just kidding," he reassures husbands
and boyfriends, then adds quickly to the women: "See you
later").
</p>
<p> After holding court in his dressing room, Pavarotti pressed
into the crowded corridor followed by the members of a
documentary-film crew, one of whom held a white umbrella to
diffuse a floodlight. As the tenor made his progress toward the
exit under the effulgent parasol, bestowing more blessings and
kisses, breaking into nimble dance steps and mugging for the
camera, he looked like a cross between an Oriental potentate and
the late Zero Mostel. Before heading off in his Rolls-Royce, he
rated his performance that night: "8.5 on a scale of ten, and,
remember, I never give myself ten."
</p>
<p> Others do. The Pavarotti voice inspires some opera buffs
to evoke the pre-World War I Golden Age, and others to proclaim
a new one. "It's a phenomenal instrument, one of those freaks
of nature that come very rarely in a hundred years," says
Conductor Richard Bonynge. Clear and penetrating it has a
brilliant, metallic timbre and yet remains warm, with a gorgeous
romantic sheen. Pavarotti supports it with a taut, energizing
column of air that keeps the tone uniform, from top to bottom;
his notes have been described as a set of "perfectly matched
pearls."
</p>
<p> His range is high, encompassing top Bs, Cs, and even Ds
with an unforced, open-throated quality that Italians call
lasciarsi andore--letting it pour forth. Many tenors blessed
with such an instrument would be content to let it pour forth
at top volume, and subtlety be damned. Pavarotti has instinctive
taste and musicality, not to mention a keen sense of timing. He
shades his phrasing and dynamics in order to bring the
composer's lines to life and let them breathe.
</p>
<p> To George Cehanovsky, 87, a former baritone at the
Metropolitan who has heard most of the great voices of this
century, Pavarotti combines the pastora (soft) beauty of
Beniamino Gigli with the effortless high notes of Giacomo
Lauri-Volpi. Others bear echoes of Jussi Bjoerling's silvery
refinement. Pavarotti himself cites a more recent predecessor
as a model: Giuseppe di Stefano, who at his best had a
burnished, flowing style.
</p>
<p> "But voice alone isn't what ensures a singer's
immortality," says Rosa Ponselle, whose own niche in the soprano
pantheon seems secure. "There's a certain something that makes
its way across the footlights, sometimes even though the
electrical circuits in a recording machine. Pavarotti has it."
Ponselle believes it is this ineffable communicative power, and
not matters of timbre and style, that forges the link between
Pavarotti and his fore-runners, especially Caruso. Says
Ponselle: "Probably the biggest similarity between Pavarotti and
Caruso is the way each could envelop an audience, the way each
could make every person feel that he or she was being sung to
individually."
</p>
<p> With Pavarotti this is a conscious intention. He senses his
voice traveling along a separate thread to each member of the
audience, and he depends desperately on the response that
returns along that thread. "Applause is our oxygen," he says,
and the more vociferous, even hysterical, the better. He feels
that his voice blossoms before a "hot" audience. When he began
giving concerts and recitals, however, the intimacy with the
audience and the absence of operatic costumes caused him to lose
concentration. Now he sings to an imaginary listener, whom he
pictures in the center of the balcony, in order to keep his chin
up and throat straight. "It could never be an actual member of
the audience," he says. "It would be disastrous if he blew his
nose, or yawned, or began to beat time."
</p>
<p> Stage presence is one thing, acting another. Pavarotti is
often an indifferent actor, though in a broad role like the
bumpkin in Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment, he can be
an effective comedian. His chief asset, especially in romantic
roles, is his height, which offsets his distinctly un-dashing
waistline. "I never look at how wide they are, but how tall,"
says Soprano Beverly Sills. "It is a relief to be able to put
your head on a tenor's shoulder." What carries Pavarotti through
is his patent sincerity and gut-level identification with his
characters. "I can see myself as Rodolfo in Boheme." he says.
"Rodolfo is a figure of genuine emotion. This is the real thing,
so real that when Mimi enters I feel I want to take care of this
woman."
</p>
<p> With his extra measure of Ponselle's "certain something."
Pavarotti occupies a unique position among the tenors of today.
Placido Domingo, 38, his nearest rival, has a superbly smooth,
rich voice and a wider range of roles--he sings the weighty
Otello as well as bel canto parts--but he sometimes loses
impact because of a veiled timbre and somewhat muted
personality. Jon Vickers, 52, can match Pavarotti's intensity
and puts more serious thought behind his performing, but his is
an entirely different kind of voice: rugged, heroic, best suited
to dramatic works such as Otello, Les Troyens and Peter Grimes.
Nicolai Gedda, an elegant, unfailingly attractive singer, is a
supremely versatile stylist, at home in several languages; at
54, however, he is understandably not a powerhouse. Perhaps the
challenge ultimately will come from a younger singer like Jose
Carreras, 32, though to date he has shown neither the strength
nor the subtly of Pavarotti.
</p>
<p> Any kind of professional singing is a dicey venture,
requiring as it does that the performer stake his prosperity,
career and identity on barely more than an inch of exquisitely
fragile larynx. But the pressure on tenors is perhaps the most
harrowing of all. The reason is that the tenor voice is an
unnatural one, especially in the rarefied range above the staff--the four or five notes from G to high C or D. For a male
singer to reach such heights while retaining all the power and
virility of his lower range--is a rare and exhilarating
achievement. This is the heroic madness of the tenor. He girds
himself like a gladiator for an awesome exertion. Then, striving
upward, he reaches for triumph, knowing that at the same time
he is cruelly exposing himself to the most humiliating failure.
No performance recovers from a broken high C.
</p>
<p> For Pavarotti, reaching a top note brings on a mystical
feeling such as a champion high-jumper might experience. "That
second when you clear the bar in mid-air you lose
consciousness," he says. "It is something physical, animal,
beyond control. A moment later you are back on the ground and
in full control." The haunting universal fear that some day he
will jump and miss--"that I shall open my mouth and no sound
will come out"--gives Pavarotti the whim-whams before every
performance. In 1972 he made a transatlantic call to Beverly
Sills about their upcoming appearance in I Puritani, arguing
that their last-act duet, with its punishing high D-flats for
tenor, should be transposed downward. Sills assured him he could
hit the notes. "Only if you castrate me," he said. Last year,
minutes before Pavarotti's TV recital, Metropolitan Assistant
Conductor Gildo Di Nunzio found him slumped in his dressing room
"seeming so alone and terrified. He didn't think he could do it;
he wished he could cancel. I wouldn't have been in those shoes
for anything."
</p>
<p> Who can blame tenors for trying to ward off their demons
with all the vanities for which they are so notorious--the
fads, phobias, neuroses, magic charms and eccentric sexual
regimens? (Dressing room lore abounds with theories on whether
singers should eschew sex before a performance and, if so, for
how long. Most tenors seem to feel that two or three days of
abstinence builds their strength. Several leading men in the
1940s, the story goes, were sabotaged by a shapely U.S. Soprano
who seduced them just before the curtain.) The only
supernatural aid Pavarotti enlists to get himself onstage is
a bent nail in his pocket, a traditional talisman of Italian
singers. Fans, aware of this quirk, send him nails by the
dozens, sometimes silver or gold, dangling from chains or
fashioned into pins. But Pavarotti will use only an authentic
nail from the scenery backstage.
</p>
<p> Tensions and insecurities may have something to do with
Pavarotti's gormandizing too, quite beyond his sensual gusto
and need to replenish himself. After a hard evening on stage,
he has been known to put away a lobster dinner followed by a
steak dinner and an entire basket of rolls, and then to dive for
leftovers on his companion's plate. Lambrusco, the slightly
fizzy red wine of his native region, does not travel well,
according to his palate. When on tour, Pavarotti orders bottles
of Mouton-Cadet 1975, say, mixes them with bottles of Perrier
water and--ecco!--instant Lambrusco. Wherever he goes, he
has access to an expert chef: himself. At major stopovers he
likes to take a hotel suite-cum-kitchen, install a big round
table and recruit a passel of local friends to sample his
creations like Spaghetti Pavarotti. (Recipe for his sauce: half
a tube of Italian tomato paste dissolved in olive oil, then
mixed with grated Parmesan cheese and finely chopped parsley and
garlic.)
</p>
<p> Nobody knows Pavarotti's precise poundage. He keeps his own
scales and his own counsel. When asked how much he weighs, he
replies: "Less than before." How much did he weigh before? "More
than now." Hence reports of his fluctuations spread through the
opera world like a runaway Dow Jones average: up 25, down 80,
up 60. But he realizes that if he remains too heavy, he could
undermine his robust health. Which is why he periodically
submits to the dread ordeal of a diet. He is currently forbidden
to drink wine, and his most opulent meal is zucchini, rice and
250 grams (about half a pound) of meat or fish cooked with a few
drops of oil. More tragic than any scene he plays onstage is the
sight of a dieting Pavarotti at a dinner party, surrounded by
gorging guests as he disconsolately sips soda water or diet
cola.
</p>
<p> Such moments of depression are rare, but they are an
occupational hazard. Feasting or dieting, fussed over or not,
a barnstorming opera singers spends long hours of isolation in
hotels, studying, resting (Pavarotti sleeps ten to twelve hours
before a performance) or simply killing time. Pavarotti's wife
Adua joins him on tour for a few weeks each year, and friends
consider her spirited, sensible ministrations a tremendous boost
for him. Says one of them: "At least she doesn't stand in the
wings with holy water like the wives of some Italian tenors."
But Pavarotti manages only a handful of flying visits home to
Modena. He misses family life. He is perplexed by his remoteness
from his fast-growing daughters--Lorenza, 17, Christina, 15,
and Giuliana, 12--and he tends to worry about them and to
compensate with strictness when he is there.
</p>
<p> His attachment to north-central Italy is deep. On his
sacrosanct summer holiday, he invariably returns to his vacation
house in Pesaro, 150 km from Modena. He cherishes a sense of
himself as a sound, simple man of the region; he keeps up ties
with relatives and friends there, and he concentrated
investments from his considerable income (probably close to $1
million a year) in the area. Among his holdings: a record store
in Bologna and an office building near Modena.
</p>
<p> It was in Modena (pop. 180,000), an industrial city noted
for its hard-working, stubborn citizenry, its good food and its
dedication to opera, that Pavarotti was born nearly 44 years
ago. He remembers himself as a lively, gossipy scamp, always in
trouble. At school his energies went into sports; soccer became
a passion. At home he chimed in with the likes of Gigli, Tito
Schipa, Bjoerling and Di Stefano on the records collected by his
father, a baker and gifted amateur tenor. He recalls: "In my
teens I used to go to Mario Lanza movies and then come home and
imitate him in front of the mirror."
</p>
<p> By that time he had joined his father in the church choir
and a local opera chorus, and had begun performing impromptu
serenades on summer evenings outside the family's apartment
house, accompanying himself on the guitar. But music still
seemed no more than an avocation. At 18, he enrolled in a
teacher-training course. Two years later, just as he was
settling into the routine of instructing eight-year-olds in
public school, music began to look like a vocation after all.
He and his father accompanied the local chorus to an
international music festival in Llangollen, Wales, where--to
their delirious amazement--they won first prize. Encouraged
by Adua, whom he had met and become engaged to during teacher
training, Luciano decided to give singing a try. (Another Modena
youngster, a childhood friend of Pavarotti's, had already made
the same decision: Soprano Mirella Freni.)
</p>
<p> Deciding that "teaching was too hard on my vocal cords,"
he took a job selling insurance, then set about painstakingly
acquiring a vocal technique from teachers in the area. At 25,
having won a vocal competition in nearby Reggio Emilia, he was
awarded an engagement in a local production of La Boheme. Within
the span of three weeks, he married Adua and sang his first
Rodolfo. His debut led to other bookings in Italy and,
eventually, at minor houses all over Europe. La Scala offered
him a job as a house stand-by for all its tenor roles, but he
turned it down: "I thought to myself, when I sing at La Scala
I want to come in through the principals' entrance."
</p>
<p> In 1963, when he was 27, he got a job as a stand-by for
Giuseppe di Stefano in a Covent Garden production of La Boheme
and sang several performances. Conductor Richard Bonynge heard
him and was "bowled over." Eventually, Pavarotti found himself
singing with Bonynge's wife, Joan Sutherland, in a Miami
production of Lucia di Lammermoor. To Sutherland's skeptical
eye, this strapping unknown looked like "a big schoolboy." But
to her ear? "Well, it was absolutely phenomenal--the fabulous
resonance, the shading, such range, such security." The Bonynges
signed him up for a 14-week tour of Australia.
</p>
<p> Those 14 weeks were a watershed that gave Pavarotti
invaluable experience and exposure. In Sutherland he found a
vital influence that remains one of the most potent in opera.
Says he: "I used to listen to her and think, how is it possible
that this woman's notes never seem to end? How does she produce
this endless chain of sound? I gradually realized it was her
breathing." Says Bonynge: "He was always getting hold of Joan
around the middle and feeling her muscles. He wanted to figure
out how her diaphragm worked. Especially "in her placement of
high notes, he was able to understand what she did and transfer
her way of doing it to himself."
</p>
<p> After Australia, Pavarotti was ready for a string of major
debuts: La Scala in 1965, San Francisco in 1967, the
Metropolitan in 1968. Although his Met engagement, like most of
the others, was in his lucky opera, La Boheme, he caught Hong
Kong flu and had to withdraw halfway through the second
performance. It took him three years to overcome that
anticlimactic beginning at the house. But when he did, in a
production of The Daughter of the Regiment with Sutherland, he
set New York on its critical ear with a spectacular series of
nine high Cs in a single aria. With no little help from the
publicity mills, Pavarotti the supertenor was on his way.
</p>
<p> A monumental ego is built into a performing temperament
like Pavarotti's--it has to be. Yet his associates agree that
he has succumbed to no more than a mild case of "tenoritis".
Last month, while recording Rossini's William Tell, in London,
he flared up over a balance between his voice and the orchestra.
"Why do I sound as if I'm singing in another room?" he shouted
after hearing a playback. When the producer defended the
balance, Pavarotti slammed his score shut and stomped out of the
studio. But the next day he was back to try again. "Luciano is
not temperamental," says one recording executive. "But he has
a tendency to push things to see what he can gain. If he fails,
he will back down."
</p>
<p> Vocally, Pavarotti in recent years has skillfully
negotiated the most treacherous shoals that face a tenor. Early
in his career he was a classic tenore lirico, ideally suited to
lighter lyric roles like Rodolfo, and florid bel canto roles
like Nemorino in L'Elisir d'Amore. With age, however, a tenor's
voice takes on a heavier tone and darker coloration. By the time
he is in his 40s, a tenore lirico is usually ready for roles in
the intermediate spinto (pushed) range, like Cavaradossi in
Tosca, and maybe even in the forceful, baritonal tenore
drammatico category, like the title role of Otello. But he must
use extreme care, lest he damage the muscles of his vocal
mechanism. Many a promising Rodolfo who was too eager to tackle
roles beyond his vocal weight is today running a restaurant or
sitting at a desk on the fringes of the music business.
</p>
<p> Pavarotti has been proceeding judiciously, with a Masked
Ball here, a Turandot there, and of course, the San Francisco
La Gioconda. There are some roles he will sing in the relaxed
conditions of the recording studio but not onstage, as in
William Tell, which he describes as a "scassavoce"--a voice
buster. If he does not show to advantage in a new role he may
shelve it for a while, as he seems to be doing with Manrico in
Il Travatore.
</p>
<p> The consensus of his colleagues is that he has paced
himself well. Says Eugene Kohn, a former accompanist and coach
of Pavarotti's: "There was fear that he would lose the bloom of
sound and the top notes. But if the repertoire stays too light,
you don't give the voice free rein. I recently heard him in
Luisa Miller in London, and his voice was fantastically enriched
for having sung heavier parts." Pavarotti is preparing the
formidable role of Radames in Aida for San Francisco in 1981.
Lohengrin may even be down the road some day. "I continue to
take risks," he says. "I could spend the rest of my career
singing Rodolfo, but it's not in my nature."
</p>
<p> For years Pavarotti has kept up a murderous schedule. He
thrives on the love and adulation that pour over the footlights
in waves. Doubtless, too, as one colleague observes, "greed is
an element in it." But in 1975, the plane in which Pavarotti was
returning from the U.S. crashed during its landing at the Milan
airport and broke in two. Pavarotti and the rest of the
passengers were, as he saw it, miraculously spared. Whether as
a result of the crash or not, Pavarotti seems to have made some
kind of peace with mortality.
</p>
<p> His friend Terry McEwen, a top executive of London Records
and general director-designate of the San Francisco Opera, senses
a new maturity and security: "He knows the public loves him for
himself, not only for his voice. If he lost his voice tomorrow,
they would still love him. He could go on performing, he could
be a different kind of star." That is a mind-boggling thought
for the operatic mind. Could Pavarotti's ultimate destiny be to
replace Johnny Carson?
</p>
<p> The question need not be faced for years. Says Joan Ingpen,
artistic administration director of the Metropolitan: "I will
bet that he will still be singing in his 50s and 60s." And, she
might add, still kissing girls and eating pasta and giving
tennis opponents the toilet paper. He may not shift out of high
gear, but he obviously intends to go for distance. "A voice
gives you a certain mileage, like a car," says San Francisco's
Adler. "If you are a good driver, it can go for 100,000 miles."
Clearly, Pavarotti is a good driver.
</p>
<p>Privacy, Pavarotti Style
</p>
<p> Luciano Pavarotti's annual retreat to his native region is
what all vacations should be; a spiritual refreshment. The tenor
spends a month with his family in a converted farmhouse
overlooking the Adriatic in Pesaro. Here, after eleven hectic
months as a public performer, he can be a private man, an
Italian papa. After a whirl of cosmopolitan continent-hopping,
he can return to his cultural roots.
</p>
<p> But even Pavarotti's relaxation has a carnival air. Privacy
for him means being surrounded by a mere dozen or so people. The
entrance to his property has a closed-circuit TV camera for
screening visitors, yet the gate is rarely shut, except at
night, because nobody wants to be bothered with all that opening
and closing. Musicians like Conductor Claudio Abbado, in-laws,
the curator of Pesaro's Rossini Museum, journalists, the local
doctor--the guests constantly come and go.
</p>
<p> The Metropolitan's Gildo Di Nunzio is on hand to help
Pavarotti learn his new role in La Gioconda. Beyond the big
French doors the sea glistens invitingly, and the opera houses
of the world seem far away. Yes, work must be done, but first,
perhaps, a spin in the cabin cruiser? A workman arrives to fix
the pool; he must be invited in for a glass of wine. The three
Pavarotti daughters wander through, or his wife Adua settles in
a corner; an interlude of familial chatting and joking is
irresistible.
</p>
<p> Pavarotti's method of appeasing Di Nunzio's sense of duty
is to whistle a phrase to show that he is at least thinking
about music. Even while cavorting in the pool, Pavarotti
whistles. Finally they get to the keyboard for some detailed
drilling on the score. But soon a pungent aroma drifts in from
the kitchen where Anna, the cook, is at work. "The day is a
crescendo reaching its climax at lunch," says Di Nunzio. "Lunch
is very important. Luciano will be singing a phrase, and
abruptly he gets up, still singing, and walks away. Luciano and
the phrase disappear into the kitchen." If Di Nunzio paces
restlessly past the kitchen door, Pavarotti looks up smilingly
from a steaming saucepan--and whistles.
</p>
<p> Later, on the terrace near a stone fountain he designed
himself, Pavarotti presides boisterously over a table that
rarely has fewer than 14 or 16 guests around it. Over plates of
polenta (cornmeal porridge), sausage and pork in a thick gravy,
washed down with Lambrusco, the talk moves from local politics
to musical gossip; the burglary of Herbert von Karajan's Saint-
Tropez villa, or the scheduling problems caused by the love
affair of two internationally known singers.
</p>
<p> In the afternoon, Pavarotti attacks his easel. Three years
ago, a fan in Chicago gave him a set of oil paints after seeing
him portray the artist Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca. He taught
himself to paint; large, naif landscapes in blazing colors, most
of them based on postcard photos of places he has never seen.
</p>
<p> A young Italian soprano arrives from Udine with her
American husband to audition for Pavarotti. After an aria and
a few exercises, he say he cannot evaluate her voice because
her notes are produced from the chest without proper support.
"A baby crying is a perfect demonstration of correct vocal
technique," he tells her. "The baby chooses a note that is
comfortable and can cry all night without tiring or getting a
sore throat. Why? Because it produces the sound in the natural
way, by pushing it up from the diaphragm."
</p>
<p> Occasionally Pavarotti will gather a few guests into his
grey Mercedes for the two-hour drive to Modena. There, in the
cobbled square in front of the city, handsome Romanesque
cathedral, he is greeted familiarly as "Luciano" by seemingly
hundreds of old friends and schoolmates, and as "Signor Tenore"
by everyone else. His father, 65, still sings in the church
choir and local chorus--and now enjoys the status of a
recording artist, thanks to a few small roles on Pavarotti's
albums. Both parents will join the Pavarotti menage soon.
Luciano plans to settle everybody in a newly purchased 17th
century mansion, which has a poplar-lined avenue leading into
its twelve acres.
</p>
<p> As his summer idyl comes to an end, Pavarotti faces up to
two realities. There is a new season to be taken on, and new
poundage to be taken off. He undergoes his customary blood test,
takes his own blood pressure and pronounces himself fit but
"rather overweight." Then he flies off to London for recording
sessions, leaving his family to readjust after a period of
revolving solely around him. He calls Adua later to see how
things are going. "Wonderful," she sighs wearily. "The girls and
I are about to start our vacation."
</p>
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