With his uniquely thrilling voice and exceptionally endearing personality, the tenor Luciano Pavarotti touched an audience of millions worldwide. It was often said that he was the most popular opera singer since the legendary Caruso. Each of these Italian tenors had an instantly recognisable vocal timbre — Pavarotti’s brightly gleaming silver, his predecessor’s richly bronze. Pavarotti also had in common with his great predecessor an insatiable love of performing, an expansive and outgoing nature and, above all, the ability to make each person in any audience believe he was singing to them alone.

Throughout his life Pavarotti remained intensely loyal to his birthplace, Modena. His father, a baker, possessed an impressive tenor voice that was heard in his church choir. Pavarotti often paid tribute to his father and the early encouragement he was given in modest surroundings. One of his earliest excursions outside Italy was to perform as a member of Modena’s Rossini Choir in the 1955 international singing competition at Llangollen, in North Wales, where it won first prize.

The young tenor studied under Arrigo Pola and Ettore Campogalliani (the latter was also the teacher of Pavarotti’s fellow Modenese, Mirella Freni, who was later to partner him on stage many times). In 1961 Pavarotti made his professional debut at Reggio Emilia as Rodolfo in La bohème. It was soon to become a favourite role of Pavarotti’s. Rodolfo also introduced his artistry to Covent Garden two years later. Giuseppe Di Stefano was scheduled to sing Bohème, but Joan Ingpen, the Garden’s casting director, had hired Pavarotti as a “cover”, with the promise that he would be given a debut in the final performance. Not the most reliable of tenors, Di Stefano withdrew halfway through his second Rodolfo and Pavarotti took over the role to great acclaim.

It suited him admirably: with a long, schoolboyish scarf around his neck, Pavarotti — less bulky in those days — passed easily for a young poet and offered a ringing high C in his aria. Audiences at Glyndebourne saw him the next year in a very different role, Idamante in Idomeneo, proving that he could sing Mozart as well as popular Italian opera.

The life of Pavarotti

Life and times of Luciano Pavarotti

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Background

• Home town hails Pavarotti - warts and all

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• Luciano Pavarotti

Multimedia

• Video: the best of Pavarotti

• Pavarotti's career in pictures

Pavarotti’s critics claimed that he was not a musician on the level of Plácido Domingo, and that his ability to read a score was limited. He admitted that in the early days he learnt several roles by ear. His career was never especially varied stylistically, but his repertoire was chosen with great care. This helped immeasurably in preserving his instrument over more than four decades. He built up his infallible technical security from a strong foundation of bel canto. Pavarotti sang Bellini and Donizetti, plus Verdi’s lighter roles and Puccini’s Rodolfo, for years before moving on to heavier fare: initially Tosca and Turandot, eventually La Gioconda, Il trovatore, Aïda and the “other” Rodolfo (in Luisa Miller, an opera that showed him to particular advantage). Perhaps it was Domingo’s supremacy as Otello that dissuaded Pavarotti from singing that mighty role until 1991, and then only in concert. Even after taking on dramatic material, he was always able to keep his voice flexible by returning to one of his lightest roles, Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore.

A hugely important year for Pavarotti was 1965, which included his first appearance at La Scala (Bohème); his American debut as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor (which would become one of his most affecting portrayals) at Greater Miami Opera, with Joan Sutherland in the title role; and — most important for his artistic development — a tour of Australia in a company put together by Sutherland with her husband, the conductor Richard Bonynge. Pavarotti noted years later that, at this early stage of his own career, observing and working with the technically incomparable Sutherland was hugely important for him.

For their part, the Bonynges found in Pavarotti the ideal tenor for much of the repertoire they were then performing in the opera house and in Decca recordings. With their encouragement, Pavarotti took on some of the most demanding bel canto roles. Opposite Sutherland he was to earn tremendous acclaim in such roles as Edgardo, Arturo in I puritani, Elvino in La sonnambula and Orombello in Beatrice di Tenda (this last role only in the recording studio, for his first complete opera for Decca). Another bel canto opera with Sutherland provided Pavarotti with the “superstar is born” moment of his career: La Fille du Régiment at Covent Garden (1966). The tenor cavorted delightfully through the role of Tonio, stopping the show with the nine high Cs of his first aria as well as with the exquisite legato phrasing of his second.

In short order Pavarotti conquered the big US theatres, including the Metropolitan Opera, where he first appeared in 1968. As with most of his debuts in important international houses, the role was Puccini’s Rodolfo. The tenor quickly became a darling of the New York public, and many new Met productions were staged especially for him, among them Il trovatore, La favorita and Ernani. He reprised his success in Fille with Sutherland (1972), and the pair — joined by Sherrill Milnes and James Morris — sang gloriously in the house’s first staging of Bellini’s I puritani in 45 years (1976). Having been Glyndebourne’s Idamante back in 1964, Pavarotti took the role of that character’s father, the title hero of Idomeneo (1982), in the company’s first production of Mozart’s opera.

The tenor’s relationship with Lyric Opera of Chicago began in 1973 with yet another superb portrayal of Rodolfo. Appearances in his other signature parts followed — Edgardo, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Nemorino, the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, Riccardo in Un ballo in maschera — and also one of the heaviest roles he sang on stage, Radames in Aïda, also heard at the Met, San Francisco Opera and La Scala). Over eight seasons in Chicago, however, there were also 26 cancelled performances out of 41. The company’s general director, Ardis Krainik, was unwilling to continue disappointing her subscribers. In 1989, while making clear that she retained her affection for the tenor, Krainik made public her decision that Lyric Opera would not hire Pavarotti again.

The cancellations were nothing new; they had already occurred during the 1980s in Australia and at Covent Garden, distressing audiences and theatre officials. Pavarotti’s withdrawal from Tosca at the Garden in 1983 produced an outcry, not least because the reason given was “a dust allergy” backed up by a doctor’s certificate of inordinate length. This caused a rift between Pavarotti and the ROH that was to last for some time.

By the mid-1980s Pavarotti was devoting considerable time to concerts, many of which were sung in stadiums and arenas with orchestras all over the world. Cynics declared that he was undertaking these appearances because the rehearsal time was minimal and the fees high. There can be little doubt that he thrived on the excitement of appearing live before audiences that on many occasions exceeded 100,000.

On one rain-soaked July night in 1990 in Hyde Park, London’s traffic stopped and the audience, though drenched, stayed in their seats. Only stars of the magnitude of Madonna or Michael Jackson could have cast a similar spell. In 1992 Pavarotti showed a new concern when, after stopping midway through a Sheffield concert because of a severe cold, he promised to return in good voice. This he did six weeks later, at reduced prices.