Word: sopranos
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...other tenor in modern times has hit the opera world with such seismic force. At 6 ft. and nearly 300 lbs., "Big P," as Soprano Joan Sutherland calls him, is more than lifesize, as is everything about him?ins clarion high Cs, his fees of $8,000 per night for an opera and $20,000 for a recital, his Rabelaisian zest for food and fun. "He is not primo tenore, " says San Francisco Opera General Director Kurt Herbert Adler. "He is primissimo tenore...
...Gioconda, it unfolded a Mediterranean saga of a mysterious letter, bitter rivalries and ominous threats. And that was only backstage. Pavarotti, who is conscientious and meticulously punctual when he finally gets down to business, clashed at rehearsal with his costar, Soprano Renata Scotto, over her lateness and somebody's fluffs (whether hers or his was part of the dispute). They even stopped in mid-aria to exchange words not found in the libretto. On the day of the gala opening, Scotto received a letter warning that a claque was planning to boo her. It was signed "Enzo Grimaldo," the character...
...voice alone isn't what ensures a singer's immortality," says Rosa Ponselle, whose own niche in the soprano pantheon seems secure. "There's a certain something that makes its way across the footlights, sometimes even through the electrical circuits in a recording machine. Pavarotti has it." Ponselle believes it is this ineffable communicative power, and not matters of timbre and style, that forges the link between Pavarotti and his forerunners, especially Caruso. Says Ponselle: "Probably the biggest similarity between Pavarotti and Caruso is the way each could envelop an audience, the way each could make every person feel that...
...broad role like the bumpkin in Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment he can be an effective comedian. His chief asset, especially in romantic roles, is his height, which offsets his distinctly un-dashing waistline. "I never look at how wide they are, but how tall," says Soprano Beverly Sills. "It is a relief to be able to put your head on a tenor's shoulder." What carries Pavarotti through is his patent sincerity and gut-level identification with his characters. "I can see myself as Rodolfo in Bohème," he says. "Rodolfo is a figure of genuine emotion...
...lore abounds with theories on whether singers should eschew sex before a performance and, if so, for how long. Most tenors seem to feel that two or three days of abstinence builds their strength. Several leading men in the 1940s, the story goes, were sabotaged by a shapely U.S. soprano who seduced them just before the curtain.) The only supernatural aid Pavarotti enlists to get himself onstage is a bent nail in his pocket, a traditional talisman of Italian singers. Fans, aware of this quirk, send inm nails by the dozens, sometimes silver or gold, dangling from chains or fasinoned...