Legendary Tenor Luciano Pavarotti Dies

Luciano Pavarotti, whose powerful voice and spirited personality won him unprecedented acclaim and made him one of the most beloved opera stars of all time, has died at the age of 71.

Pavarotti passed away Thursday morning at his home in Modena, Italy according to his manager Terri Robson. He had been diagnosed last year with pancreatic cancer.

“The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life. In fitting with the approach that characterized his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness,” a released statement said.

The celebrated tenor first gained notice in the 1960s and 1970s, performing standards by Puccini and Verdi.

His final performance was Puccini’s Nessun Dorma, which he sang at in February 2006 at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Between his black beard, twinkling eyes and sizeable girth, Pavarotti was immediately recognizable, often outshining his Three Tenors counterparts Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras.

“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,” Domingo said in a statement from Los Angeles.

“I also loved his wonderful sense of humour and on several occasions of our concerts with Jose Carreras – the so-called Three Tenors concerts – we had trouble remembering that we were giving a concert before a paying audience, because we had so much fun between ourselves.”

Though the Three Tenors concerts were sometimes criticized as a sellout, Pavarotti fiercely defended them.

“The word commercial is exactly what we want,” he said of the shows. “We’ve reached 1.5 billion people with opera. If you want to use the word commercial, or something more derogatory, we don’t care. Use whatever you want.”

Born in 1935 in Modena, Pavarotti had a modest but contented upbringing. As a youngster he didn’t sing as much as he played soccer but he always had an ear for music, listening to his father’s Gigli, Schipa and Di Stefano records.

“Our family had very little, but I couldn’t imagine one could have any more,” Pavarotti said.

At 20, after his choir went to a music competition in Wales, the tenor began to focus more on his music. He sold insurance to pay for lessons, and in 1961 won the role as Rodolfo in Puccini’s La Boheme. In the years that followed he debuted at some of the world’s biggest venues including Milan’s La Scala, and New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.

He became known at the peak of his career as the “King of the High C’s” on account of his ability to hit the high notes. His subsequent collaboration with Domingo and Carreras reportedly earned the singers millions of dollars each and opened opera up to countless new listeners.

Pavarotti was also dedicated to humanitarian work, singing charity concerts for causes including the Bosnia war in the mid-1990s and a devastating earthquake in Armenia.

Pavarotti leaves behind his wife Nicoletta and four daughters from two marriages. A funeral will be held Saturday inside Modena’s cathedral.

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Here are some key facts on Pavarotti:

Pavarotti was born in the Italian town of Modena in October 1935. Sports occupied much of his time and he earned his first local fame as a member of the town’s soccer team.

He first sang in the Modena chorus with his father, a fervent opera lover and gifted amateur tenor.

His debut came in April 1961, in Puccini’s popular opera “La Boheme”, at the opera house in Reggio Emilia. That success led to engagements throughout Italy and the world, where he conquered audiences in Amsterdam, Vienna, Zurich, New York and London.

His big break came in London thanks to another Italian opera great tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, who dropped out of a performance of “La Boheme” in 1963.

His American debut came in February 1965, in a Miami production of an opera by Gaetano Donizetti, “Lucia di Lammermoor” with Joan Sutherland, the beginning of what would become an historic partnership.

In 1972, in a production of Donizetti’s “La Fille du Regiment” Pavarotti sang an aria containing nine effortless high C’s. The audience erupted in a frenzied ovation, and the young tenor’s reputation soared beyond the confines of opera and classical music.

In 1990 Pavarotti joined Spanish stars Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras at the soccer World Cup and introduced operatic classics to millions of football fans around the world.

Sales of opera albums shot up after the gala concert in Rome’s Baths of Caracalla was beamed to 800 million people, and strains of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” from his opera “Turandot” became as fixed a feature of football mania as the usual more raucous chants.

While Pavarotti’s stage star faded in his sixties, he found new personal life, leaving his wife of 37 years for an assistant 34 years his junior and younger than his three daughters. The black-bearded singer married Nicoletta Mantovani after an acrimonious divorce.

Medical problems beset “Big Luciano” in the final years of his career, forcing him to cancel several dates of his marathon worldwide farewell tour. He underwent surgery in July 2006 to remove a pancreatic tumor and was not seen in public after that.

Sources: Reuters/Sony/ www.sonyclassical.com