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By ERIN PARKE - Stuff.co.nz | Thursday, 6 September 2007
Reuters
ERA ENDS: Opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti has died at his home town in Italy.
Luciano Pavarotti, one of the world's best-known tenors, has died at the age of 71 in his hometown of Modena in north-central Italy.
"The great tenor Luciano Pavarotti died today at 5am (3pm NZT) at his home in Modena," Pavarotti's manager Terri Robson said in a statement.
"The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life.
"In fitting with the approach that characterised his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness."
The rotund, black-bearded tenor known as "Big Luciano" helped bring opera to the masses and performed to vast stadium audiences round the world.
Pavarotti was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in July last year, forcing him to abandon a 40-concert farewell tour to undergo radiotherapy.
He was sent to hospital for several weeks with a fever last month. His health deteriorated quickly after being released on August 25.
"He remained optimistic and confident that he would overcome the disease and had been determined to return to the stage to complete his Worldwide Farewell Tour," the statement said.
He is survived by his wife, Nicoletta, their four-year-old daughter, Alice, and three daughters from Pavarotti's first marriage.
The news saddened Italians, particularly those in Modena, Pavarotti's hometown. Police stood watch outside Pavarotti's villa as television crews gathered.
"For Modena, it is a enormous loss. Modena is known to the world thanks to Pavarotti," said Antonio Dibiccari, 39.
Pavarotti, the son of a baker and a factory worker, was born on October 12, 1935. He developed a keen interest in singing at the age of nine after he joined the local church choir with his father.
At 19 he began formal operatic training, but failed to find recognition and employment for the next six years.
The struggling tenor's parents agreed to support his career choice on the condition he would move out of home at the age of 30 and support himself.
Pavarotti quit singing in 1960 due to a throat nodule, but a rapid recovery saw him return to the stage.
He wrote of this time in his autobiography, "Everything I had learned came together with my natural voice to make the sound I had been struggling so hard to achieve."
Finally, the tenor's profile began to grow, his performances warmly received throughout Italy.
Pavarotti's breakthrough performance came when a tenor took ill on Australian Joan Sutherland's 1965 US tour. Pavarotti filled in at short notice to great critical acclaim.
His fame grew with triumphant performances in London, Rome and Sydney, which had critics gushing about his voluminous voice.
The impassioned performances drove audiences into frenzy - one performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera inspired a record 17 curtain calls.
Pavarotti's signature prop - a white dinner cloth - came about by chance in 1973. Anxious and perspiring before his international recital debut in Missouri, he asked for a hankerchief and was handed a dinner cloth instead.
As Pavarotti's profile as a singer grew, so did his celebrity. In the 1980s he was consider the world's third highest selling musician, behind Madonna and Elton John.
The tenor was known for his democratic approach to music - in 1988 a duet with Vanessa Williams saw him become the first and only opera singer to star on Saturday Night Live.
Perhaps Pavarotti's biggest gift to the music world was when he clubbed together with Spanish stars Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras at the 1990 soccer World Cup and introduced operatic classics to an estimated 800 million people round the globe.
The Three Tenors recording still holds the record for the most classical albums sold. The trio's brand continued to grow with performances at soccer World Cups in 1994, 1998 and 2002.
Throughout the 90s, Pavarotti embarked on a series of massive concerts that raised the profile of classical music and his own status as a bearded icon of opera. In 1993 he performed to crowds of 150,000 in Hyde Park and 500,000 in New York, with millions more enjoying the shows on television.
Pavarotti's march into the mainstream music charts continued with his collaboration with U2 on their 1995 song Miss Sarajevo.
He was unabashedly thrilled by fame, telling Newsweek magazine, "I want to be famous everywhere. I tell you, the time spent signing autographs is never enough."
Pavarotti developed a close friendship with Princess Diana after he joined her campaign against landmines.
He declined an invitation to perform at her funeral, saying he could not sing well with "grief in his throat".
In 1998 Pavarotti became on of only 15 artists to receive the Grammy Legend Award since it began in 1990. His most recent release was the pop-flavoured Ti Adoro, in 2003.
While his private life was marred by tragedy, Pavarotti appeared to have found happiness in recent years.
He married Adua Veroni as an unknown at age 26, but after the birth of three daughters the partnership dissolved.
In 2003 he married long-term partner and assistant Nicoletta Mantovani. The pair had two children, however, due to complications at the time of birth, only one, Alice, survived.
Over 40 years on the stage, Pavarotti developed a re****tion for hitting incredibly high notes - but also for unreliability.
Known in some circles as 'The King of Cancellations', he was famously banned from performing at Lyric Opera of Chicago after pulling out of 26 of the 41 scheduled performances in an eight-year period.
Other controversies dogged Pavarotti's career. In 1992 he was sued by the BBC for selling the broadcaster a lip-synched concert.
Pavarotti become embroiled in allegations of tax fraud in 2000, agreeing to repay $12 million in taxes after it was determined his home was in Italy, not Monte Carlo as he had claimed.
Luciano Pavarotti's lasting legacy, however, will be his opera. While purists objected to his commercialisation of classical music, audiences could not get enough of his perfectly pitched high Cs and flamboyant performances.
Regarded as the greatest tenor since Caruso, Pavarotti harnessed the power of television to communicate his music to a global audience. His flexibility as a recording artist is credited with helping to restore opera to the musical mainstream and finding the genre fresh audiences.
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