Word: pavarottie
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What fan of pay-per-view television duels could resist such an event? In this corner, the operatic heavyweight from Modena, Italy, Luciano Pavarotti! And in this corner, that Iberian emoter, champeen tenor Placido Domingo! The kings of the high Cs will head a list of stars on Sept. 23, when a 25th-anniversary gala at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City is broadcast in a way usually associated with professional punch-'em-ups: live pay-per-view television...
Soprano Mirella Freni, 56, will not sing Madama Butterfly onstage. The part is so heavily emotional that she feels it could upset the vocal balance she has spent a lifetime achieving. Luciano Pavarotti has just won acclaim for his first Otello, and most musical experts think he was right to wait until age 55 to try the heroic role. The list of parts that tenor Alfredo Kraus, 63, will not touch reads almost like a chart of opera's greatest hits, including Cavaradossi in Tosca and Rodolfo in La Boheme. Kraus sticks strictly to lighter parts that do not strain...
...initial years onstage are crucial, and according to their elders, many of today's young singers are in too much of a rush. Leonie Rysanek, 64 and still a shimmering soprano, says, "The first word to learn is no, if you want a career." Says Pavarotti: "Go easy. One new role a year is plenty." Before his Otello, sung in a concert version with the Chicago Symphony, music fans speculated that he lacked the declamatory heft for the part. But Pavarotti not only had it; he was able to sing three out of four performances with a bad cough...
Maybe Polonius' advice holds for singers: to thine own self be true. Nilsson feels that "there almost has to be another you, standing at your side, in full control." To Pavarotti, long success depends on "remaining a student all your life. Remember the first lesson you ever took and believe it." Oh, and a couple of other things. Freni recommends pasta on performance days. Rysanek warns against after-performance partying. And Nilsson decrees, at all cost, wear comfortable shoes...
...after all, the Bear, whom some describe as only part grizzly and the rest Teddy. His wife Brenda and their three children know him as a pussycat: an outdoorsman, an amateur magician, a cookie muncher, a fellow who lulls himself to sleep listening to tapes of Pavarotti or the sounds of honking geese and mountain streams. So what if he likes Charles Bronson movies...