Luciano Pavarotti, whose glorious, unforced tenor voice and gusto as a performer helped redefine tenor stardom at a level scarcely seen since Enrico Caruso, died today at his home in Modena, Italy, after a yearlong battle with pancreatic cancer, his manager said. He was 71.
Pavarotti had been in poor health since undergoing emergency cancer surgery in July 2006, after which he canceled all his remaining engagements for the year. He was hospitalized last month for a series of tests, then released.
His manager, Terri Robson, told the Associated Press in an e-mail that Pavarotti died at 5 a.m. local time.
Pavarotti was one of the great natural operatic talents of the latter half of the 20th century. He boasted a bright, ringing tone with high notes that could sound with effortless clarity, and there was a ripe, sensual beauty to his singing that penetrated the heart.
Although he rarely ventured outside the Italian repertoire, Pavarotti brought a full measure of emotional ardor and lyrical grace to the music he championed. His phrasing was fluid and articulate, with an easy eloquence that illuminated even the most technically challenging music.
Pavarotti was never an especially committed actor, and in his later years, when his lifelong struggle with weight had hampered his mobility, his stage performances were often perfunctory. But from a purely musical perspective, his accounts of some f his signature roles – in operas by Verdi, Puccini and Donizetti above all – defined those roles for an entire generation of singers and audiences.
“He was a unique artist,” said former San Francisco Opera General Director Lotfi Mansouri, who worked extensively with Pavarotti throughout his career. “First of all, he had this fantastic voice and an Italian style that was so natural. Like Callas, it was one of those voices that as soon as you heard just two notes on the radio, right away you knew who it was.
“He loved the audience, he lived for the audience – at the end of every concert, he would have this incredible smile on his face. And he popularized opera, because he was one of the very few opera stars whose name everybody knew.”
“He had the most gorgeous, supple, musical, Italianate lyric tenor of a half-century – maybe a whole century,” said San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley, “as well as a delightful down-to-earth teddy-bear personality that reached out and brought millions of people closer to opera. I specifically remember his games of tennis out on Fifth Avenue with Johnny Carson.”
Beginning in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Pavarotti expanded the range of his celebrity beyond the world of the operatic stage. His appearance during the 1990 World Cup, singing “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s “Turandot,” made him the equivalent of an international pop star, and his high-profile appearances with Plácido Domingo and José Carreras as the Three Tenors brought him huge new audiences.
He made other forays into the world of pop entertainment as well, beginning with the 1982 Hollywood film “Yes, Giorgio,” in which he played an opera singer who falls for a throat specialist played by Kathryn Harrold. In 1998 he was the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live.”
Pavarotti was a frequent and extraordinarily popular performer with the San Francisco Opera, from his 1967 company debut as Rodolfo in Puccini’s “La Bohème” to his final 1988 appearance in the same role.
Throughout the 1970s, he appeared with the company nearly every season, giving his first career performances here of a large number of the mainstay roles in the Italian repertoire.
San Francisco audiences heard his role debuts as Riccardo in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” (1971), Fernando in Donizetti’s “La Favorita” (1973), Rodolfo in Verdi’s “Luisa Miller” (1974), Manrico in Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” (1975), Calaf in Puccini’s “Turandot” (1977), Enzo Grimaldi in Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” (1979) and Radames in Verdi’s “Aida” (1981).
In 1981, Pavarotti gave a concert at the Civic Auditorium to raise money for the Italian town of Morra de Sanctis, which had been devastated by an earthquake the previous year.
Pavarotti was born Oct. 12, 1935, in Modena, Italy, the son of working-class music lovers. A childhood friend was the soprano Mirella Freni, whose mother worked with Pavarotti’s in the same factory.
“We both drank from the same wet nurse,” he told The Chronicle’s Marilyn Tucker in a 1967 interview. “I drank doubles, as you can see.”
After musical studies in Modena, Pavarotti made his operatic debut in 1961, in a production of “La Bohème” at Reggio nell’Emilia in Northern Italy. Engagements in Amsterdam and London quickly followed, and he made his U.S. debut in 1965 with the Greater Miami Opera, stepping in as a last-minute substitute for an ailing tenor in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” on the recommendation of soprano Joan Sutherland.
His career took off soon thereafter as companies throughout the United States and Europe clamored for his services. He recorded voluminously as well, compiling a discography that according to his official Web site extended to 110 discs.
By the 1990s, though, he was making fewer appearances in opera houses and more in arenas.
In 1994, on the eve of an appearance in the 20,000-seat San Jose Arena, Pavarotti took a swipe at the acoustics of the War Memorial Opera House, where he had sung so often in previous decades. “In America,” he said, “there is only one theater made for opera – the Met. The others, even San Francisco, are more like a big cinema.”
Pavarotti faced new hurdles during the final years of his career. He was heckled at Milan’s venerable Teatro alla Scala and banned from the Lyric Opera of Chicago after canceling one too many times. He was caught lip-syncing during a performance for the BBC.
He underwent an acrimonious split from his longtime manager, Herbert Breslin, who responded with the tell-all memoir “The King and I,” co-written with New York Times critic Anne Midgette. In 1996, a tabloid scandal hit when Pavarotti left his wife of 35 years for his 26-year-old assistant, whom he later married.
Pavarotti is survived by his wife, the former Nicoletta Mantovani, four daughters and a granddaughter.
Pavarotti on disc
Among the highlights of the tenor’s discography for Decca:
— Donizetti: “L’Elisir d’Amore” (1970) with Joan Sutherland, Richard Bonynge conducting.
— Puccini: “Turandot” (1972) with Joan Sutherland, Zubin Mehta conducting.
— Puccini: “La Bohème” (1972) with Mirella Freni, Herbert von Karajan conducting.
— Puccini: “Madama Butterfly” (1974) with Mirella Freni, Herbert von Karajan conducting.
— Mozart: “Idomeneo” (1983), Sir John Pritchard conducting.
— “Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti in Concert” (1990), Zubin Mehta conducting.
Email Joshua Kosman at [email protected].
