Luciano Pavarotti
Oct. 12, 1935 - Sep. 6, 2007
Luciano Pavarotti was laid to rest Saturday in his hometown of Modena, Italy. The great tenor was buried at Montale Rangone cemetery, where his parents and stillborn son, Riccardo, are also interred.
Seven hundred people attended Pavarotti's funeral at Modena's cathedral. Among the guests were the Italian premier, Romano Prodi, U2's Bono, Kofi Annan, and film director Franco Zeffirelli. Outside, in Modena's main piazza, thousands of people gathered to watch the service on a huge television screen.
Tenor Andrea Bocelli sang Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus," and the Rossini Chorus performed hymns throughout the service. Perhaps the most moving moments came when a message from Pavarotti's 4 year old daughter, Alice, was read and a 1978 recording of duets Pavarotti made with his father was played.
Having sold over 100 million records since the 1960's, Pavarotti was the highest selling classical artist and the first with a number one hit on the pop charts. His "Three Tenors" concerts with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras were a huge success that reached people all over the world. Pavarotti also performed with pop stars such as the Spice Girls.
Pavarotti's ability and willingness to reach a wider audience was unparalleled in the classical world. For this, he was often criticized for bowing to commercialism, but he disagreed with the critics. "The word 'commercial' is exactly what we want," he said after appearing in the "Three Tenors" concerts. "We've reached 1.5 billion people with opera."
Opera aficionados though had been enthralled with Pavarotti since the 1960's, and in 1972, during a performance of Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment," his ability to hit nine glorious high C's in rapid succession turned him into an international superstar.
Pavarotti was also very highly regarded by his peers. Placido Domingo said, "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." Carreras told reporters he was "one of the greatest tenors ever."
Soprano Renee Fleming remembered singing with Pavarotti during a telecast at Lincoln Center. "He had the most perfect technique in the history of recorded music," she said. "He also captured the hearts of the larger public in a way which rivaled only Enrico Caruso in the 20th century."
A day before he passed, the Italian government awarded Pavarotti with a prize for his work promoting Italian culture in his country and abroad. Milan's La Scala opera house, where he first performed over 40 years ago, said it would join a Modena theater in organizing a singing contest in his honor. Pavarotti welcomed the idea, saying he hoped the contest would "open the door to young people." He went on to say, "I've always thought that our real value, our real strength lies in the enthusiasm, the devotion and the encouragement we can transmit to the young."
Luciano Pavarotti will indeed be missed.