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slideshow: classical editor Neil Fisher
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Two pictures of Luciano Pavarotti are indelible. One is of the sweating,
ageing star with the flag-sized handkerchief in a football stadium, still
striving for those ringing notes and often finding them, despite everything.
The other is of a lithe young man who could sing as if no effort was
involved, sending an electric charge out from the stage with an innocent and
instinctive power.
The slimmer figure is far in the past now, and the older Pavarotti is the one
that you remember first. But, as with other stars of the opera who’ve
embarked on one last tour too many, it’s important to remember the freshness
that first brought him fame. When he first sang at Covent Garden in 1963 in
La Bohème and Lucia di Lammermoor with Joan Sutherland, those who heard him
were introduced to a voice that had an extraordinary quality – a thrilling
tone and natural power accompanied by a clarity in his diction that seemed
to set him apart. Even then, they say, he couldn’t act (though at least he
could move nimbly around on the stage) but who cared? His voice was one of
those instruments – like Giuseppe di Stefano’s or Carlo Bergonzi’s from the
generation before his – that rang like a bell cast from the purest gold, and
seemed to catch the essence of the Italian love affair with opera.
These things don’t happen often. Though as an artist, Plácido Domingo has a
wider repertoire by far and has mastered the business of theatre-drama in a
way that Pavarotti never could, that voice had a quality that fitted him for
the stage. Sutherland said yesterday that to stand next to him and hear him
take off was an experience that made even her tremble. His American stardom
began alongside her in a famous production of Donizetti’s La Fille du
Régimentat the Metropolitan Opera in New York, when he leapt over the
Beecher’s Brook of the string of high Cs with an aplomb that left everyone
gasping. From that moment he was a star.
It would lead him, years later and in the end, to the concerts which petered
out last year in less than happy circumstances. His bulk was an impediment,
his weariness obvious in the last years, and the voice hampered by hearing
difficulties which made it an effort to keep in tune. That he still managed
to produce thrilling moments was extraordinary; but they were reminders of
what had gone before rather than a recreation of it.
Few singers of his fame seem to be able to lower the curtain on their careers
with the right mixture of dignity and self-awareness. When he was due to
give his last performance in Tosca at the Met, he cancelled a couple of
hours before the performance with illness, though he’d insisted that he was
fit only that afternoon. The general manager told the crowd that he’d said
to the singer: “It’s a helluva way to end a great career.” And it was.
There had been a cracked high note at La Scala on the high-octane first night
of the season in 1992 in Verdi’s Don Carlos, a signal that, on stage, the
light was beginning to fade. It was embarrassing because the notorious crowd
loved their part in his humiliation and because he had set great store by
the performance in demonstrating that he hadn’t lost the touch. But he had.
In the latter years the roles were few, the movements painfully restricted.
Only on the concert platform could he reproduce some of the moments that
made audiences tremble.
The finest days were long past, but they do shimmer in the memory for those
who experienced them. Listening yesterday to a live recording of La Bohème
in Genoa in 1969 was to hear a voice of such freshness and innocence that it
belied the work that had gone into it. He sings as if he is just breathing;
the music pours out. In that performance he was on stage with Mirella Freni,
the soprano who was his contemporary as a child at home in Modena. It’s said
that as babies they shared the same wet nurse. And here they were, Puccini’s
lovers revealing, almost explaining, how Italian opera works, and why it
casts such a spell. The language flows like honey, their voices blend
naturally, they respond instinctively to the grace and the spring of the
score.
These are the days to remember. The natural appeal of the Italian way with
opera is a straightforward appeal to the senses. From the bel canto roles in
Donizetti and Bellini though Verdi to Puccini, Pavarotti was an exemplar of
the breed of singer who wants to please. This is more than a concern for
accuracy and delicacy in performance. It is a demand for attention,
sometimes a plea for sympathy, always a demonstration of how music can
colour familiar emotions in new and vivid shades. In Pavarotti’s grin, the
wide-armed appeal for more applause, his eagerness to carry on until the
last illness, you see the same innate enthusiasm that first made him stand
out when he sang in the Modena choir that went to sing at the eisteddfod in
Llangollen in 1955 and which took him on to the stage.
Because it is a style that is suspicious of restraint, and encourages bravura
displays, there’s always the lurking danger of over-the-top histrionics that
can tip easily into vulgarity. Yet the early Three Tenors Concerts with
Domingo and José Carreras had a visceral good humour to them that were part
of a tradition that stretched back to singers in ages past who tried to
outshine each other with acrobatic vocal tricks. The difference was that
this time they were heard by all the world.
For those who recoil from such public displays, it seemed a sell-out.
Amplified voices, rampant commercialism, inflated prices – for some they
were the antithesis of the art of opera. But the charge is not entirely
fair. Many of the later concerts are best forgotten but, in the round,
Pavarotti’s career was an adornment. His last tours shouldn’t be allowed to
blot out the earlier, sharper picture of a singer who could thrill an
audience with a near-miraculous pianissimo and then rouse it with, say,
those nine high Cs in La Fille du Régiment which can bring a tenor down in a
flash or make him just as quickly. The nerve and the drama were
unmistakable, like the sap and juice of that voice, and these are the proper
memories.
AND THE NEW PAVAROTTI?
JUAN DIEGO FLÓREZ
Strengths The 34-year-old Peruvian pings out high Cs with effortless
brilliance – and excels in the same bel-canto repertoire in which Pavarotti
first made his name. Earlier this year he made history by repeating an aria
from Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment (a famous Pav calling card) at La
Scala – breaking a 70-year embargo on encores at the legendary Milanese
opera house.
Weaknesses Unlike Pavarotti he shows no signs of moving into the
red-meat roles of Puccini and Verdi. No chance of him thrilling 80,000
people with Nessun Dorma any time soon.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN
Strengths Immensely charismatic on stage, bouncy and likeable off it,
the frizzy-haired Mexican has a rich and darkly distinctive voice. At 35 he
has struck up a fruitful partnership with the glamorous Russian soprano Anna
Netrebko, both on stage and in the recording studio.
Weaknesses More likely to be the new Domingo than the new Pavarotti.
Prefers to concentrate on honing his acting skills than marketing himself on
stadium tours.
JONAS KAUFMANN
Strengths He may have Latin-lover looks, but the 38-year-old is German
to the core: serious, earnest and hard-working. Daringly he sings anything
from light Mozart to Wagner and drew unanimous praise after singing a
thrilling Don José in Carmen at the Royal Opera House last December.
Weaknesses With no big record label to champion him, his profile
remains limited outside Germany.
SALVATORE LICITRA
Strengths The 39-year-old trained with the great Carlo Bergonzi and is
still Italy’s best hope for a native tenor star. Jumped in for Pav himself
when he pulled out of Tosca in New York and earned huge ovations from the
crowd.
Weaknesses In recent years his voice has wavered alarmingly as he has
taken on the more demanding Verdi roles. A recent run of Tosca at Covent
Garden was no return to form – critics accused him of coarse, “can belto”
singing.
James Naughtie’s book The Making of Music: A Journey With Notes is published
by John Murray on Sept 20, price £20, and his series of the same name
resumes on BBC Radio 4 on Monday at 3.45pm
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