Thursday, September 06, 2007

OperaObit: Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti has died from pancreatic cancer in Modena. Besides being one of the few opera singers to have had a genuine operatic chart hit, with the Three Tenors' Nessun Dorma (which, in English, means "the theme from World Cup Match Of The Day"), Pavarotti also made a genuine rock record. He recorded Miss Sarajevo as part of the U2-pretending-to-not-be-U2 Eno collaboration Passengers.

In addition, through collaborations with Elton John and Zucchero, he managed to clock up six top forty hits of varying degrees of desperation; the stuttering struggle to get You'll Never Walk Alone higher than 35, however, seemed to remove most of the fun from the projects and - whether the pop-opera crossovers were intended as pension funds or genuine attempts to try and engage with a new audience - they dried up.

Nevertheless, Pavarotti created a niche for himself as "what the rock world thinks of when they think of opera", down in part, we suspect, to looking the part as much as sounding it.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a shame. I had him down to play Cut-Throat Jake in the live action version of Captain Pugwash I was planning.

Alex B said...

So, Farewell then
Luciano Pavarotti
Big boned Italian
And proud beard wearer

You had cross generational
Appeal
For example, Keith's mum liked
The Three Tenors
While Keith rated your
'Passengers' collaboration with
U2 quite highly

'Non shall sleep'
That was one of your catchphrases
And it turned out to be true
Because you aren't asleep

You are dead



EJ Thribb 17½

Tim F said...

My granny always preferred Placido Domingo. Pavarotti was "too hairy", she said.

Post a Comment

As a general rule, posts will only be deleted if they reek of spam.