Watch: Pavarotti at the Grammys

George says:

I saw the Three Tenor’s concert on TV from Los Angeles, when I was in my teens. It started my lifelong passion for opera.

Nick2 says:

I heard Pavarotti first at the ROH in the disastrous early 1980s new Ponnelle production of Aida conducted by Mehta. He had sung poorly at the premiere and cancelled the second. I was at the third. Clearly nervous he finally got through Celeste Aida and then settled down. There were moments of splendour still in the voice even though the production was diabolical. The Grand March was played as an orchestral item to a chorus of ‘Boos’ and ‘Rubbish’ at the end the likes of which I have never again heard in an opera house. It was never revived.

It must have been soon after that that he started his arena adventures with Tibor Rudas. When he could make $100,000 for one night’s work and a couple of rehearsals singing into a microphone no more notes than in an average opera performance, and this at a time when the maximum fees at the main houses were probably less than one sixth of that, I think it was almost inevitable he would become lazy – or lazier than he had been beforehand. He did around 20 of these a year for much of the rest of his life, the fee increasing substantially as the years passed. Even that fee was tiny compared to what he picked up for The Three Tenors. I wonder if the new documentary will go into any of the detail of those fees or even examine the reasons for his vocal decline.

Will it also ask the question why in 2001 he and the other two sang a full open-air concert in the heat and humidity of Seoul’s Olympic Stadium one night – and then just the next night sing the same concert with a different orchestra in Beijing’s Forbidden City, also in the open air and with identical heat and humidity? That was love of money and artistry be damned taken to an almost unbelievable extreme.