Pavarotti died, at 71, where he was born, in the northern Italian city of Modena, where his father had worked in a bakery, his mother in a cigar factory. His father was a tenor too—and Luciano grew up listening not just to his father’s voice but also to his phonograph recordings of such greats as Enrico Caruso. Pavarotti sang in the Modena opera chorus, and when the chorus took first prize at a music festival in Wales, he began to seriously embrace the idea of a singing career. He took lessons, though he never had conservatory training, and it was said he couldn’t really read music. His first big break came when he filled in for a sick tenor in “La Bohème” at Covent Garden in 1963, and he went on to sing the role of Rodolfo in his La Scala debut and in his 1968 debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where, over the course of his career, he sang 378 performances, more than he did anywhere else. In 1972 at the Met, when he sang Tonio in Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment” opposite Joan Sutherland, he so magically hit the nine high C’s in a row that audiences went crazy and he was invited to appear on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson. That began the crossover to show business.
“The King of the High Cs,” as his record company called him, lived large and was famous for his outsize appetites—for food, wine, sports. A few years back he hit the gossip pages when he left his wife of 35 years—they had three daughters—for his much younger assistant, Nicoletta Mantovani, whom he married in 2003 (they have one daughter). He sang at the Met for the last time in Puccini’s “Tosca” in 2004. Though most of his great roles were in Italian operas, he was never as big a star in Italy as he was abroad, where his ebullient personality won him a wide legion of fans. His personality overpowered most of his roles; as critics pointed out, his acting ability was no match for his singing. Pavarotti was always Pavarotti—and that’s what his fans loved. That and the beautiful voice, which reached across the world.
