Purest Pavarotti
Daily Comfort ZoneBecause he could.
Even with a terrible TV piano.
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The problem is that after hearing this, hearing everyone else (tenors) singing today is a disappoinment.
Preach!
And the pianist sets the mood perfectly. He knows his Tosca. So few can do this, too, these days.
But you don’t hear this when you are listening to a tenor of today, assuming you are.
I know! It makes one despair as to whether one will ever hear a tenor as glorious as Pavarotti again. Do such tenors come along only once in a lifetime?
Voice like that comes one in the centuries. None has surpassed him, so far.
Bjorling, Gigli, Caruso. All as good as Pavarotti.
Not sure about the first two you named, but Caruso and a few others were definitely better.
Pavarotti before about age 50 (or let’s say pre-“Yes, Giorgio”) is magical, before he became a caricature of himself.
Pavarotti’s voice was almost intact until April 1996’s Andrea Chenier with Millo then he caught pneumonia afterwards and he never completely regained his breath control. His voice never became a caricature. Wonderful man.
Vicker’s voice did become a caricature around 1986 and the egregious Handel Samson’s with the radiant TeKanawa
Grazie!
Here’s a more dramatic version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp4yg0c7Jso
Not to mention how dead most television studios are acoustically and he sings it like he was at La Scala anyway.
Absolutely!
In this video he is almost screaming rather than singing. A bit later in his career he became for a short while somewhat more musical than here, though the timbre of his voice always remained quite plain and generic. For example, Domingo in his tenorial prime was more dramatic and expressive, and Kaufmann until about six years ago sounded richer and with far more colorful shadings in his voice.
No one has equalled yet the intense communicativeness of Pavarotti’s voice. Its warm humanity that tugs at the heart.
He’s so very much missed. I remember when I first heard about Pavarotti; it was in the late 1970s and I remember catching an interview with him on TV (Michael Parkinson?). I remember thinking ‘this great big bear of a man, hugely overweight, and so incredibly charismatic”!!
Too much pedal, but wonderful singing.
How can you compare Pavarotti with other tenors who sang different repertoire? He was a great bel canto singer most at home in Rossini/ Bellini / Donizetti. I never heard him sing an Evangelist in the Bach Passions nor anything in the lieder repertoire. Unlike Domingo he never sang Heldentenor roles in Wagner. How does he rank against singers such as Peter Schreier and Anthony Rolfe Johnson? Apples and oranges. There is no ‘greatest tenor’ , just great tenors. Cherish them all.