Leontyne Price in 1994

Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano. Born and raised in the Deep South, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.^[1][2][3]

One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant", "soaring" and "a Price beyond pearls", as well as "genuinely buttery, carefully produced but firmly under control", with phrases that "took on a seductive sinuousness." ^[4] Time magazine called her voice "Rich, supple and shining, it was in its prime capable of effortlessly soaring from a smoky mezzo to the pure soprano gold of a perfectly spun high C."^[5]

A lirico spinto (Italian for "pushed lyric") soprano, she was considered especially well suited to the roles of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, as well as several in operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Her voice ranged from A-flat below middle C to the E above high C. (She said she reached F "in the shower.")

After her retirement from the opera stage in 1985, she continued to appear in recitals and orchestral concerts for another 12 years.

Among her many honors are the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), the Kennedy Center Honors (1980), the National Medal of Arts (1985), numerous honorary degrees, and nineteen Grammy Awards, 13 for operatic or song recitals, five for full operas, and a special Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989, more than any other classical singer. In October 2008, she was one of the recipients of the first Opera Honors given by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Life and career[link]

Leontyne Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi. Her father James worked in a lumber mill and her mother Katie was a midwife who sang in the church choir. They had waited 13 years for a child, and Leontyne became the focus of intense pride and love. Given a toy piano at the age of three, she began piano lessons with a local teacher. When she was in kindergarten, her parents traded in the family phonograph as the down payment on an upright piano. At 14, she was taken on a school trip to hear Marian Anderson sing in Jackson, an experience she later said was inspirational.

Price in 1951

In her teen years, Leontyne accompanied the "second choir" at St. Paul's Methodist Church, sang and played for the chorus at the black high school, and earned extra money by singing for funerals and civic functions. Meanwhile, she often visited the home of Alexander and Elizabeth Chisholm, an affluent white family for whom Leontyne's aunt worked as a laundress. Mrs. Chisholm encouraged the girl's early piano playing, and later noticed her extraordinary singing voice.

Aiming for a teaching career, Price enrolled in the music education program at the all-black Wilberforce College in Wilberforce, Ohio. (This institution's public and private arms split in her junior year and she graduated from the publicly funded half, which became Central State University.) Her success in the glee club led to solo assignments, and she was encouraged to complete her studies in voice. She sang in the choir with another soon-to-be-famous singer, Betty Allen. With the help of the Chisholms and the famous bass Paul Robeson, who put on a benefit concert for her, she enrolled on a scholarship at the Juilliard School in New York City, where she studied with Florence Page Kimball, who would remain her principal teacher and advisor throughout the 1960s.

Her first opera performance was as Mistress Ford in a 1952 student production of Verdi's Falstaff. Shortly thereafter, Virgil Thomson hired her for the revival of his all-black opera, Four Saints in Three Acts. After a two-week Broadway run, Saints went to Paris. Meanwhile, she had been cast as Bess in the Blevins Davis/Robert Breen revival of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, and returned for the opening of the national tour at the Dallas State Fair, on June 9, 1952. The tour visited Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., and then went on a tour of Europe, sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

Price from Porgy and Bess 1953

On the eve of the European tour, Price married the noted bass-baritone William Warfield, who was singing Porgy in the Davis-Breen production, in a ceremony at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, with many in the cast in attendance. In his memoir, My Music and My Life, Warfield describes how their careers forced them apart. They were legally separated in 1967, and divorced in 1973. They had no children.

At first, Price planned on a recital career, modeling herself after Anderson, tenor Roland Hayes, Warfield, and other great black concert singers. On occasional leaves from Porgy, she sang new songs and song cycles by American composers, including Lou Harrison, John La Montaine, and Samuel Barber.

However, her Bess proved she had the instincts and the voice for the operatic stage, and the Met itself recognized this by inviting her to sing "Summertime" at a "Met Jamboree" fund-raiser on April 6, 1953 at the Ritz Theater on Broadway. Price was therefore the first African American to sing with the Met, if not at the Met. That distinction went to Marian Anderson, who, on January 7, 1955, sang Ulrica in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera.

Emergence[link]

In November 1954, Price made her recital debut at New York's Town Hall with a program that featured the New York premiere of Samuel Barber's cycle "Hermit Songs", with the composer at the piano. (They had performed the world premiere of the cycle the previous fall at the Library of Congress.) Then, opera opened its door to her through TV. In February 1955, she sang Puccini's "Tosca" for NBC-TV Opera, under music director Peter Herman Adler, and became the first African American to appear in a leading role in televised opera. Several NBC affiliates (not all Southern) canceled the broadcast in protest.

That March, Andre Mertens, Price's agent at Columbia Artists, arranged an audition for her at Carnegie Hall with the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, then touring with the Berlin Philharmonic. Karajan declared her "an artist of the future" and invited her to sing Salome under his baton at La Scala. (On the advice of Miss Kimball and Mertens, she declined.) In 1955-56, 1956-57 and 1957-58, Price made recital tours across the U.S. in the Community Concerts series, and toured India(1956) and Australia (1957), sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

She took her first steps onto the grand operatic stage in San Francisco on September 20, 1957, singing Madame Lidoine in the U.S. premiere of Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. A few weeks later, Price sang her first Aida, stepping in for Italian soprano Antonietta Stella. The following May, she made her European debut at the Vienna Staatsoper on May 24, 1958, as Aida, under Karajan. There followed debuts at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (replacing Anita Cerquetti), and at the Arena di Verona, both in Aida. She returned to Vienna the following year to sing Aida and her first onstage Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, and in the summer of 1959, made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in the "Missa Solemnis", under Karajan.

Over the next decade, Karajan conducted Price in many of her greatest performances, in the opera house (Mozart's Don Giovanni, Verdi's Il trovatore and Puccini's Tosca), in the concert hall (Bach's B-minor Mass, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Bruckner's Te Deum, and the Requiems of Verdi and Mozart), as well as in the recording studio (complete recordings of Tosca and Carmen, and a bestselling holiday music album A Christmas Offering--all of which are available on CD).

On May 21, 1960, she made her first appearance at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, again as Aida. She was the first African American to sing a leading role in Italy's greatest opera house. (In 1958, [Mattiwilda Dobbs]] had sung Elvira, the secondary lead soprano role in Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri.)

Metropolitan Opera[link]

The Metropolitan Opera invited Price to sing a pair of performances as Aida in 1958, but she turned down the offer on the advice of friends, including Peter Herman Adler, director of NBC Opera. In his autobiography, William Warfield writes that Adler said, "Leontyne is to be a great artist. When she makes her debut at the Met, she must do it as a lady, not a slave."

In the summer of 1959, Met General Manager Rudolf Bing heard an Il Trovatore at Verona in which Price sang with tenor Franco Corelli. There followed an invitation to the Met to perform multiple leading roles. On January 27, 1961 she and Corelli made a historic double-debut with Corelli in Trovatore. The final ovation lasted at least 35 minutes, one of the longest in Met history. (Price said her friends had timed it at 42 minutes, and she used that number in her later publicity.)

In his review, The New York Times critic Harold Schonberg wrote that Price's "voice, warm and luscious, has enough volume to fill the house with ease, and she has a good technique to back up the voice itself. She even took the trills as written, and nothing in the part as Verdi wrote it gave her the least bit of trouble. She moves well and is a competent actress. But no soprano makes a career of acting. Voice is what counts, and voice is what Miss Price has."

The reviews were less heady for Corelli, who told Bing the next morning that he would never sing with Price again. However, he relented and Price and Corelli sang together often over the next dozen years.

In the next few weeks, Price gave her Met performances as Aïda, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, and Liu in Turandot. In the middle of this extraordinary run of debuts, equaled by only a few sopranos in the Met's history, Time magazine put her on its cover. The next fall, American music critics named her "Musician of the Year" and she was put on the cover of "Musical America."

In September 1961, Price opened the Met season as Minnie in La fanciulla del West. When a musicians' strike had threatened to abort the season, President Kennedy sent Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg to mediate a settlement. During the second "Fanciulla" performance, she had her first serious vocal crisis. In the middle of the second Act, she grew hoarse and then lost her singing voice. She chose to shout her lines to the end of the act. The standby, soprano Dorothy Kirsten, was called to sing the third Act. The newspapers reported that Price was suffering a virus infection. After several weeks off, she repeated the Fanciulla, and then, after a Butterfly in December, canceled appearances for the rest of the year, and, in February 1962, left for a two-month respite in Rome. The official word was that she had never fully recovered from the earlier virus, but Price later said she was suffering from exhaustion.

In April, she returned to New York for her first Met Toscas. On her first Met tour that spring, she sang Tosca, "Butterfly," and two performances of Fanciulla, including one in Dallas that marked the first performance by an African-American on the Met tour in the South.

Other African American singers had preceded Price in leading roles at the Met.^[6] However, Price was the first African American to build a star career on both sides of the Atlantic, the first to return to the Met in multiple leading roles, and the first to earn the Met's top fee. In 1964, according to the Met archives, Leontyne Price was paid $2,750 per performance, on a par with Joan Sutherland, Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi. At the time, Birgit Nilsson, who was unique in singing Italian and Wagnerian roles, earned the Met's highest fee, $3,000 a performance.

Over the next five seasons, Price added seven more roles at the Met: (in chronological order) Elvira in Verdi's Ernani, Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte, Tatyana in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Cleopatra in Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, and Leonora in La forza del destino. Her voice and temperament were especially well suited to Verdi's "middle period" heroines, noble ladies with high, glowing lines and postures of dignified suffering and prayerful supplication. She was also the leading exponent of the plaintive soprano part in Verdi's Requiem.

[edit] Antony and Cleopatra

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Her career climaxed on September 16, 1966, when Price sang Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra by American composer Samuel Barber, commissioned to open the Met's new house at Lincoln Center. Since their early collaborations, Price and Barber had remained close friends and colleagues, and the composer tailored Cleopatra's music to Price's warm middle register and soaring top.

In the performances, Price's singing was praised, especially for a powerful death scene, but the opera as a whole was widely considered a failure. Director Franco Zeffirelli was blamed for burying the music under heavy costumes and huge scenery. Bing admitted he had underestimated the challenge of mounting nine new productions that season (three in the first week), and relying heavily on untested high-tech equipment. (In rehearsals, an expensive turntable broke down and, in the dress rehearsal, another mechanical failure left Price trapped briefly inside a giant pyramid.)

Still others complained that Barber's score was difficult to grasp because of the dense Shakespearean verse, and lacked satisfying set pieces (apart from a powerful death aria for Cleopatra). The opera was never revived at the Met. However, with the help of Gian Carlo Menotti, Barber later reworked the score for successful productions at the Juilliard School and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, where it received praise. Barber also prepared a concert suite of Cleopatra's arias, which Price premiered in Washington in 1968 and subsequently recorded. Price lobbied Kurt Herbert Adler to have it produced in San Francisco, but did not succeed.

Late opera career[link]

In the late 1960s, Price cut back her operatic performances in favor of recitals and concerts. She was tired, frustrated with the number (and quality) of the Met's new productions, and perhaps felt the need to rework her vocal technique as she reached middle age. She became a popular artist in the orchestral and performing arts series in the major American cities and large universities. In the early 1970s, she also returned to Europe, for opera performances in Hamburg and London's Covent Garden, and gave her first recitals in Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, and the Salzburg Festival. At the latter she became a favorite recitalist, appearing in 1975, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, and 1984.

She continued to sing limited numbers of performances at the Met and San Francisco, but undertook only three new roles after 1970. They were: Giorgetta in Puccini's Il tabarro (San Francisco only); Puccini's Manon Lescaut (San Francisco and New York); and Ariadne in Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos (San Francisco and New York).

She was frequently called on as a soloist for state occasions. In January 1973, she sang "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers" at the state funeral of President Lyndon Johnson, at whose 1965 inauguration she had sung. President Jimmy Carter invited her to sing a nationally televised recital at the White House in 1978, and she return to sing for a State Dinner after the signing of the Camp David Accords and on the visit of Pope John Paul II.

In October 1973, after missing a season, she returned to the Met to sing Madama Butterfly for the first time in a decade. In 1976, the Met mounted for her a long-delayed new production of Aida, with James McCracken as Radames and Marilyn Horne as Amneris, directed by John Dexter. The next year, she renewed her partnership with Karajan in a Brahms Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, and returned to Europe for what proved her final opera performances there, in Il trovatore at the Salzburg Easter Festival and Vienna's Staatsoper (the latter her first appearance there since 1964).

In 1977, Price sang her last new role, and her first Strauss heroine, the title role of "Ariadne auf Naxos," in San Francisco, to positive reviews. When she brought the role to the Met in 1979, she was suffering from a viral infection and cancelled six of her eight scheduled performances. Reviewing her first performance, the New York Times critic John Rockwell was not complimentary.^[7]

Price by Jack Mitchell, 1981

In fall 1981, she had a late career triumph when she stepped in for soprano Margaret Price as Aida in San Francisco, a role she had not sung since 1976. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herbert Caen reported that she had insisted on being paid $1 more than the tenor, Luciano Pavarotti. This would have made her, for the moment, the highest-paid opera singer in the world. The opera house denied this.

After revisiting some of her most famous roles in San Francisco and at the Met, Price gave her operatic farewell on January 3, 1985, in a televised performance of Aida from the Met. Time Magazine described it as a "vocally stunning performance... that proved she can still capture her peak form." ^[3] Donal Henahan wrote that the "57-year-old soprano took an act or two to warm to her work, but what she delivered in the Nile Scene turned out to be well worth the wait." In 2007, PBS viewers voted her singing of the aria, "O Patria Mia", as the No. 1 "Great Moment" in 30 years of "Live from the Met" telecasts.^[8] The performance ended with 25 minutes of applause.^[4]

Price sang 201 performances with the Met, in 16 roles, in the house and on tour, including galas. (She was absent for three seasons—1970–71, 1977–78, and 1980-81—and sang only in galas in 1972-73, 1979–80, and 1982-83.)

Post-operatic career[link]

From left to right, NEA Chairman Dana Gioia honors the first class of National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honorees in 2008: Price, Carlisle Floyd, Richard Gaddes.

For the next dozen years, she continued to perform concerts and recitals. Her recital programs, framed by her longtime accompanist David Garvey, usually combined Handel arias, French mélodies, German Lieder, an aria or two, and a group of American art songs by Barber, Ned Rorem, and Lee Hoiby, and ended with spirituals. She liked to end a sequence of encores with "This Little Light of Mine", which she said was her mother's favorite spiritual.

With time, Price's voice became darker and heavier, but her upper register held up well and the conviction and joy in her singing always spilled over the footlights. On November 19, 1997, she gave a recital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that turned out to be her last.

Before retiring, Price gave several master classes at Juilliard and other schools. In 1997, at the suggestion of RCA-BMG, she wrote a children's book version of Aida, which became the basis for the hit Broadway musical by Elton John and Tim Rice in 2000.

Price avoided the term African American, preferring to call herself an American, even a "chauvinistic American".^{[citation needed]} She summed up her philosophy thus: "If you are going to think black, think positive about it. Don't think down on it, or think it is something in your way. And this way, when you really do want to stretch out, and express how beautiful black is, everybody will hear you."^{[citation needed]}

In October 2001, at age 74, Price was asked to come out of retirement to sing in a memorial concert at Carnegie Hall for the victims of the September 11 attacks. With James Levine at the piano, she sang a favorite spiritual, "This Little Light of Mine", followed by an unaccompanied "God Bless America", capping it with a bright, easy high B-flat. She lives in Greenwich Village in New York City.

Recordings[link]

Leontyne Price's commercial recordings include three complete sets of Il trovatore, two of La forza del destino, two of Aida, two of Verdi's Requiem, two of Tosca, and one each of Ernani, Un ballo in maschera, Carmen, Madama Butterfly, Cosí fan tutte, Don Giovanni (as Donna Elvira), Il tabarro and (her final complete opera recording) Ariadne auf Naxos. She also recorded a disc of highlights from Porgy and Bess, singing the music of all three female leads. It was conducted by Skitch Henderson and featured William Warfield as Porgy.

She recorded five Prima Donna albums of operatic arias generally of roles that she never performed on stage. She also recorded two albums of Richard Strauss arias, recitals of French and German art songs, two albums of Spirituals, and a crossover disc, Right as the Rain, with André Previn. Her recordings of Barber's "Hermit Songs", scenes from Antony and Cleopatra, and "Knoxville: Summer of 1915," were reissued on CD as Leontyne Price Sings Barber. Her most popular operatic aria collection is her first, the self-titled Leontyne Price, sometimes referred to as the "Blue Album" because of its blue cover. It has been reissued on CD, and lately on SACD. In 1996, for her 70th birthday, RCA-BMG issued a limited edition 11-CD boxed collection of her recordings, with an accompanying book, entitled The Essential Leontyne Price.

Archival recordings of live performances have also appeared. Deutsche Grammophon released CDs of live Salzburg performances of "Missa Solemnis" (1959) and Il trovatore(1962), both conducted by Karajan. In 2002, RCA discovered a tape of her 1965 Carnegie Hall recital debut and released it in its "Rediscovered" series. In 2005, Bridge Records released the complete 1953 Library of Congress recital with Barber, including the "Hermit Songs," Henri Sauguet's "La Voyante", and songs by Poulenc. In August 2008, a tape of a September 1952 Berlin performance of the Breen-Davis "Porgy and Bess" was found in the Berlin radio archives and released on CD—offering the earliest recorded glimpse of Price's voice and style. In 2011, Sony Classics brought out on disc her first two Met broadcasts, Il Trovatore (1961) and Tosca (1962), both with Corelli.

Critical appreciation[link]

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In The Grand Tradition, a 1974 history of operatic recording, the British critic J.B. Steane writes that "one might conclude from recordings that [Price] is the best interpreter of Verdi of the century." For the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, a 1963 Price performance of Tosca at the Vienna State Opera "left me with the strongest impression I have ever gotten from opera." In his 1983 autobiography, Plácido Domingo writes, "The power and sensuousness of Leontyne's voice were phenomenal--the most beautiful Verdi soprano I have ever heard."

Price, Honoree at National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honors, 2008

In an interview, Price once recalled that Maria Callas had told her, during a meeting with the older diva in Paris, "I hear a lot of love in your voice." The sopranos Renee Fleming, Kiri Te Kanawa, Jessye Norman. Leona Mitchell, Barbara Bonney, Sondra Radvanovsky, the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, bass-baritone Jose Van Dam, and the countertenor David Daniels, talk about Price as an early inspiration.

Miles Davis, in Miles The Autobiography, writes: "Man, I love her as an artist. I love the way she sings Tosca. I wore out her recording of that, wore out two sets. Now, I might not do Tosca, but I loved the way Leontyne did it. I used to wonder how she would have sounded if she had sung jazz. She should be an inspiration for every musician, black or white. I know she is to me."^[9]

She has also had her critics. In his book The American Opera Singer, Peter G. Davis wrote that Price had "a fabulous vocal gift that went largely unfulfilled," criticizing her reluctance to try new roles, her Tosca for its lack of a "working chest register", and her late Aidas for a "swooping" vocal line. Others criticized her lack of flexibility in florid music, and her occasional mannerisms, including scooping or swooping up to high notes, gospel-style. Karajan took her to task for these during rehearsals for the 1977 Il trovatore, as Price herself related in an interview in Diva, by Helena Matheopoulos. In later recordings and appearances, she sang with a cleaner line.

Her acting, too, drew different responses over a long career. As Bess, she was praised for her dramatic fire and sensuality, and tapes of the early NBC Opera appearances show her an appealing presence on camera. In her early Met years, she was often praised for her dramatic as well as vocal skill.

In March 2007, on BBC Music magazine's list of the "20 All-time Best Sopranos" based on a poll of 21 British music critics and BBC presenters, Leontyne Price was ranked fourth, after, in order, Maria Callas, Dame Joan Sutherland, and Victoria de los Ángeles.^[10]

References[link]

Notes[link]

Books[link]

• Sir Rudolf Bing, 5,000 Nights at the Opera: The Memoirs of Sir Rudolf Bing (Doubleday, 1972).
• Peter G. Davis, The American Opera Singer: The Lives and Adventures of America's Great Singers in Opera and Concert from 1825 to the Present (Anchor, 1999).
• Plácido Domingo, My First Forty Years (Alfred A. Knopf, 1983).
• Peter G. Davis, The American Opera Singer (Doubleday, 1997).
• Barbara B. Heyman, Samuel Barber, The Composer and His Music (Oxford University Press, 1992).
• Helena Matheopolous, Diva: Sopranos and Mezzo-sopranos Discuss Their Art (Northeastern University Press, 1992).
• Luciano Pavarotti with William Wright, Pavarotti, My Own Story (Doubleday, 1981), ISBN 978-0-385-15340-9
• Stephen Rubin, The New Met (MacMillan, 1974).
• Winthrop Sargeant, Divas (Coward, McCann, Geohegan, 1973).
• J.B. Steane, The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record (Timber Press, 1993).
• Robert Vaughan, Herbert von Karajan (W.W. Norton & Company, 1986).
• Galina Vishneyskaya, Galina, A Russian Story (Harvest/HBJ Book, 1985).
• William Warfield, with Alton Miller, William Warfield: My Music and My Life (Sagamore Publishing, 1991).

Articles[link]

• "From Collard Greens to Caviar: Leontyne Price Reminisces", Opera News, July and August 1985.
• "Reunion: Justino Diaz", by Eric Myers, Opera News, March 2006, Vol. 70, No. 9
• "Time After Time", Stephen Blier reviews "The Essential Leontyne Price" CD collection, Opera News, October 1996
• "The Garbo of Opera", by David Perkins, News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina), October 5, 1986
• "Leontyne Price Ill, To Rest for Month", New York Times, December 23, 1961
• "Where Atlanta's 'Big Mules' Relax", Time, January 10, 1977 (on 1964 "Don Giovanni" controversy)

External links[link]

• Leontyne Price at the Internet Movie Database
• Leontyne Price at the Internet Broadway Database
• Metropolitan Opera Archives Database
• Leontyne Price "Voice of the Century" Extensive fan site
• Leontyne Price Biography on Afrocentric Voices

Luciano Pavarotti performing at the opening of the Constantine Palace in Strelna, 31 May 2003. The concert was part of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg.

Luciano Pavarotti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (12 October 1935 – 6 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor, who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, and established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century.^[1] He was one of The Three Tenors and became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others.

Pavarotti began his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy. That same year, he made his first international appearance in La traviata in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.^[2] He sang in opera houses in addition to Italy, in the Netherlands, Vienna, London, Ankara, Budapest and Barcelona. The young tenor earned valuable experience and recognition while touring Australia at the invitation of soprano Joan Sutherland in 1965. He made his United States debut in Miami soon afterwards, also on Sutherland's recommendation. His position as a leading lyric tenor was consolidated in the years between 1966 and 1972, during which time he first appeared at Milan's La Scala and other major European houses. In 1968, he debuted at New York City's Metropolitan Opera as Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème. At the Met in 1972, in the role of Tonio in Donizetti's La fille du régiment he earned the title "King of the high Cs" when he sang the aria "Ah mes amis ... pour mon âme". He gained worldwide fame for the brilliance and beauty of his tone, especially into the upper register.^[3] He was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. The late 1970s and 1980s saw Pavarotti continue to make significant appearances in the world's foremost opera houses.

Celebrity beyond the world of opera came to Pavarotti at the 1990 World Cup in Italy with performances of Puccini's "Nessun dorma", sample (help·info) from Turandot, and as one of The Three Tenors in their famed first concert held on the eve of the tournament's final match. He sang on that occasion with fellow star tenors Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, bringing opera highlights to a wider audience. Appearances in advertisements and with pop icons in concerts furthered his international celebrity.

His final performance in an opera was at the Metropolitan Opera in March 2004. Later that year, the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) inducted him into its Italian American Hall of Fame in recognition of his lifetime of work. During a ceremony held at the Foundation's Anniversary Gala just four days after his 69th birthday, singer Faith Hill presented Pavarotti with a birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to the opera legend.

The 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, saw Pavarotti on stage for the last time, where he performed "Nessun dorma", with the crowd serving as the aria's chorus, and he received a thunderous standing ovation.^[4]

He died from pancreatic cancer on 6 September 2007.

Earlier life and musical training[link]

Luciano Pavarotti was born in 1935 on the outskirts of Modena in Northern Italy, the son of Fernando Pavarotti, a baker and amateur tenor, and Adele Venturi, a cigar factory worker.^[5] Although he spoke fondly of his childhood, the family had little money; its four members were crowded into a two-room apartment. According to Pavarotti, his father had a fine tenor voice but rejected the possibility of a singing career because of nervousness. World War II forced the family out of the city in 1943. For the following year they rented a single room from a farmer in the neighbouring countryside, where the young Pavarotti developed an interest in farming.

After abandoning the dream of becoming a football goalkeeper, Pavarotti spent seven years in vocal training. Pavarotti's earliest musical influences were his father's recordings, most of them featuring the popular tenors of the day - Beniamino Gigli, Giovanni Martinelli, Tito Schipa and Enrico Caruso. Pavarotti's favourite tenor and idol was Giuseppe Di Stefano.^[6] He was also deeply influenced by Mario Lanza, saying, "In my teens I used to go to Mario Lanza movies and then come home and imitate him in the mirror".^[7] At around the age of nine he began singing with his father in a small local church choir.

After what appears to have been a normal childhood with a typical interest in sports — in Pavarotti's case football above all, he graduated from the Scuola Magistrale and faced the dilemma of a career choice. He was interested in pursuing a career as a professional football goalkeeper, but his mother convinced him to train as a teacher. He subsequently taught in an elementary school for two years but finally allowed his interest in music to win out. Recognising the risk involved, his father gave his consent only reluctantly.

Pavarotti began the serious study of music in 1954 at the age of 19 with Arrigo Pola, a respected teacher and professional tenor in Modena who offered to teach him without remuneration. Not until he began these studies was Pavarotti aware that he had perfect pitch.^{[citation needed]}

In 1955, he experienced his first singing success when he was a member of the Corale Rossini, a male voice choir from Modena that also included his father, which won first prize at the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen, Wales. He later said that this was the most important experience of his life, and that it inspired him to become a professional singer.^[8] At about this time Pavarotti first met Adua Veroni. They married in 1961.

When his teacher Arrigo Pola moved to Japan, Pavarotti became a student of Ettore Campogalliani, who at that time was also teaching Pavarotti's childhood friend, Mirella Freni, whose mother worked with Luciano's mother in the cigar factory. Like Pavarotti, Freni was destined to operatic greatness; they were to share the stage many times and make memorable recordings together.

During his years of musical study, Pavarotti held part time jobs in order to sustain himself – first as an elementary school teacher and then as an insurance salesman. The first six years of study resulted in only a few recitals, all in small towns and without pay. When a nodule developed on his vocal cords, causing a "disastrous" concert in Ferrara, he decided to give up singing. Pavarotti attributed his immediate improvement to the psychological release connected with this decision. Whatever the reason, the nodule not only disappeared but, as he related 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".

Career[link]

1960s–1970s[link]

Pavarotti began his career as a tenor in smaller regional Italian opera houses, making his debut as Rodolfo in La Bohème at the Teatro Municipale in Reggio Emilia in April 1961.

Very early in his career, on 23 February 1963, he debuted at the Vienna State Opera with the same role. In March and April 1963 Vienna saw Pavarotti again as Rodolfo and as Duca di Mantova in Rigoletto. The same year saw his Royal Opera House debut, where he replaced an indisposed Giuseppe di Stefano as Rodolfo.^[9]

While generally successful, Pavarotti's early roles did not immediately propel him into the stardom that he would later enjoy. An early coup involved his connection with Joan Sutherland (and her conductor husband, Richard Bonynge), who in 1963 had sought a young tenor taller than herself to take along on her tour to Australia.^[10] With his commanding physical presence, Pavarotti proved ideal.^[11] The two sang some forty performances over two months, and Pavarotti later credited Sutherland for the breathing technique that would sustain him over his career.^[12]

Pavarotti made his American début with the Greater Miami Opera in February 1965, singing in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor opposite Joan Sutherland on the stage of the Miami-Dade County Auditorium in Miami. The tenor scheduled to perform that night became ill with no understudy. As Sutherland was traveling with him on tour, she recommended the young Pavarotti as he was well acquainted with the role.

Shortly after, on 28 April, Pavarotti made his La Scala debut in the revival of the famous Franco Zeffirelli production of La Bohème, with his childhood friend Mirella Freni singing Mimi and Herbert von Karajan conducting. Karajan had requested the singer's engagement. After an extended Australian tour, he returned to La Scala, where he added Tebaldo from I Capuleti e i Montecchi to his repertoire on 26 March 1966, with Giacomo Aragall as Romeo. His first appearance as Tonio in Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment took place at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 2 June of that year. It was his performances of this role that would earn him the title of "King of the High Cs".

He scored another major triumph in Rome on 20 November 1969 when he sang in I Lombardi opposite Renata Scotto. This was recorded on a private label and widely distributed, as were various recordings of his I Capuleti e i Montecchi, usually with Aragall. Early commercial recordings included a recital of Donizetti (the aria from Don Sebastiano were particularly highly regarded) and Verdi arias, as well as a complete L'Elisir d'Amore with Sutherland.

His major breakthrough in the United States came on 17 February 1972, in a production of La Fille du Régiment at New York's Metropolitan Opera, in which he drove the crowd into a frenzy with his nine effortless high Cs in the signature aria. He achieved a record seventeen curtain calls.

Pavarotti sang his international recital début at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, on 1 February 1973, as part of the college's Fine Arts Program, now known as the Harriman-Jewell Series. Perspiring due to nerves and a lingering cold, the tenor clutched a handkerchief throughout the début. The prop became a signature part of his solo performances.

He began to give frequent television performances, starting with his performances as Rodolfo (La Bohème) in the first Live from the Met telecast in March 1977, which attracted one of the largest audiences ever for a televised opera. He won many Grammy awards and platinum and gold discs for his performances. In addition to the previously listed titles, his La Favorita with Fiorenza Cossotto and his I Puritani (1975) with Sutherland stand out.

In 1976, Pavarotti debuted at the Salzburg Festival, appearing in a solo recital on 31 July, accompanied by pianist Leone Magiera. Pavarotti returned to the festival in 1978 with a recital and as the Italian singer in Der Rosenkavalier in 1983 with Idomeneo, and both in 1985 and 1988 with solo recitals.

In 1979, he was profiled in a cover story in the weekly magazine Time.^[13] That same year saw Pavarotti's return to the Vienna State Opera after an absence of fourteen years. With Herbert von Karajan conducting, Pavarotti sang Manrico in Il Trovatore. In 1978, he appeared in a solo recital on Live from Lincoln Center.

1980s–1990s[link]

At the beginning of the 1980s, he set up The Pavarotti International Voice Competition for young singers, performing with the winners in 1982 in excerpts of La Bohème and L'Elisir d'Amore. The second competition, in 1986, staged excerpts of La Bohème and Un Ballo in Maschera. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of his career, he brought the winners of the competition to Italy for gala performances of La Bohème in Modena and Genoa, and then to China where they staged performances of La Bohème in Beijing (Peking). To conclude the visit, Pavarotti performed the first ever concert in the Great Hall of the People before 10,000 people, receiving a standing ovation for nine effortless high Cs. The third competition in 1989 again staged performances of L'Elisir d'Amore and Un ballo in Maschera. The winners of the fifth competition accompanied Pavarotti in performances in Philadelphia in 1997.

In the mid-1980s, Pavarotti returned to two opera houses that had provided him with important breakthroughs, the Vienna State Opera and La Scala. Vienna saw Pavarotti as Rodolfo in La Bohème with Carlos Kleiber conducting and again Mirella Freni was Mimi; as Nemorino in L'Elisir d'Amore; as Radames in Aïda conducted by Lorin Maazel; as Rodolfo in Luisa Miller; and as Gustavo in Un Ballo in Maschera conducted by Claudio Abbado. In 1996, Pavarotti appeared for the last time at the Staatsoper in Andrea Chenier.

In 1985, Pavarotti sang Radames at La Scala opposite Maria Chiara in a Luca Ronconi production conducted by Maazel, recorded on video. His performance of the aria "Celeste Aïda" received a two-minute ovation on the opening night. He was reunited with Mirella Freni for the San Francisco Opera production of La Bohème in 1988, also recorded on video. In 1992, La Scala saw Pavarotti in a new Zeffirelli production of Don Carlo, conducted by Riccardo Muti. Pavarotti's performance was heavily criticized by some observers and booed by parts of the audience.

Pavarotti became even better known throughout the world in 1990 when his rendition of Giacomo Puccini's aria, "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot was taken as the theme song of BBC's TV coverage of the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy. The aria achieved pop status and remained his trademark song. This was followed by the hugely successful Three Tenors concert, held on the eve of the World Cup final at the ancient Baths of Caracalla in Rome with fellow tenors Plácido Domingo and José Carreras and conductor Zubin Mehta, which became the biggest selling classical record of all time. A highlight of the concert, in which Pavarotti hammed up a famous portion of di Capua's "O Sole Mio" and was mimicked by Domingo and Carreras to the delight of the audience, became one of the most memorable moments in contemporary operatic history. Throughout the 1990s, Pavarotti appeared in many well-attended outdoor concerts, including his televised concert in London's Hyde Park, which drew a record attendance of 150,000. In June 1993, more than 500,000 listeners gathered for his free performance on the Great Lawn of New York's Central Park, while millions more around the world watched on television. The following September, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, he sang for an estimated crowd of 300,000. Following on from the original 1990 concert, the Three Tenors concerts were held during the Football World Cups: in Los Angeles in 1994, in Paris in 1998, and in Yokohama in 2002.

In 1995, Pavarotti's friends, the singer Lara Saint Paul (as Lara Cariaggi) and her husband showman Pier Quinto Cariaggi, who had produced and organised Pavarotti's 1990 FIFA World Cup Celebration Concert at the PalaTrussardi in Milan,^[14] produced and wrote the television documentary The Best is Yet to Come, an extensive biography about the life of Pavarotti.^[15] Lara Saint Paul was the interviewer for the documentary with Pavarotti, who spoke candidly about his life and career.^[16]

Pavarotti's rise to stardom was not without occasional difficulties, however. He earned a reputation as "The King of Cancellations" by frequently backing out of performances, and his unreliable nature led to poor relationships with some opera houses. This was brought into focus in 1989 when Ardis Krainik of the Lyric Opera of Chicago severed the house's 15-year relationship with the tenor.^[17] Over an eight-year period, Pavarotti had cancelled 26 out of 41 scheduled appearances at the Lyric, and the decisive move by Krainik to ban him for life was well-noted throughout the opera world, after the performer walked away from a season premiere less than two weeks before rehearsals began, saying pain from a sciatic nerve required two months of treatment.

On 12 December 1998, he became the first (and, to date, only) opera singer to perform on Saturday Night Live, singing alongside Vanessa L. Williams. He also sang with U2, in the band's 1995 song "Miss Sarajevo", and with Mercedes Sosa in a big concert at the Boca Juniors arena La Bombonera in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1999.

In 1998, Pavarotti was presented with the Grammy Legend Award. Given only on special occasions, as of 2007 it has been awarded only 15 times since its first presentation in 1990.

2000s[link]

Luciano Pavarotti performing on 15 June 2002 at a concert in the Stade Vélodrome in Marseille

In 2004, one of Pavarotti's former managers, Herbert Breslin, published a book, The King & I.^[17] Seen by many as bitter and sensationalistic, it is critical of the singer's acting (in opera), his inability to read music well and learn parts, and of his personal conduct, although acknowledging their mutual success. In an interview in 2005 with Jeremy Paxman on the BBC, Pavarotti rejected the allegation that he could not read music, although he acknowledged he did not read orchestral scores.

He received an enormous number of awards and honours, including Kennedy Center Honors in 2001. He also holds two Guinness World Records: one for receiving the most curtain calls (165)^[18] and another for the best-selling classical album (In Concert by The Three Tenors). (The latter record is thus shared by fellow tenors Plácido Domingo and José Carreras.)

In late 2003, he released his final compilation - and his first and only "crossover" album, Ti Adoro. Most of the 13 songs were written and produced by the Michele Centonze who had already helped produce the "Pavarotti & Friends" concerts between 1998 and 2000.^[19] The tenor described the album as a wedding gift to Nicoletta Mantovani.

Pavarotti began his farewell tour in 2004, at the age of 69, performing one last time in old and new locations, after more than four decades on the stage. Pavarotti gave his last performance in an opera at the New York Metropolitan Opera on 13 March 2004, for which he received a long standing ovation for his role as the painter Mario Cavaradossi in Giacomo Puccini's Tosca. On 1 December 2004, he announced a 40-city farewell tour. Pavarotti and his manager, Terri Robson, commissioned impresario Harvey Goldsmith to produce the Worldwide Farewell Tour. His last full-scale performance was at the end of a two-month Australasian tour in Taiwan, in December 2005.

In March 2005, Pavarotti underwent neck surgery to repair two vertebrae. In early 2006, he underwent further back surgery and contracted an infection while in the hospital in New York, forcing cancellation of concerts in the U.S., Canada and the UK.^[20]

On 10 February 2006, Pavarotti sang "Nessun Dorma" at the 2006 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Turin, Italy, at his final performance. In the last act of the opening ceremony, his performance received the longest and loudest ovation of the night from the international crowd. Leone Magiera, who directed the performance, revealed in his 2008 memoirs, Pavarotti Visto da Vicino, that the performance was prerecorded weeks earlier.^[21] "The orchestra pretended to play for the audience, I pretended to conduct and Luciano pretended to sing. The effect was wonderful," he wrote. Pavarotti's manager, Terri Robson, said that the tenor had turned the Winter Olympic Committee's invitation down several times because it would have been impossible to sing late at night in the sub-zero conditions of Turin in February. The committee eventually persuaded him to take part by pre-recording the song.

Other work[link]

Film and television[link]

Pavarotti's one venture into film, a romantic comedy called Yes, Giorgio (1982), was roundly panned by the critics. He can be seen to better advantage in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's adaptation of Rigoletto for television, released that same year, or in his more than 20 live opera performances taped for television between 1978 and 1994, most of them with the Metropolitan Opera, and most available on DVD.

Humanitarianism[link]

Pavarotti annually hosted the "Pavarotti and Friends" charity concerts in his home town of Modena in Italy, joining with singers from all parts of the music industry, including Andrea Bocelli, Jon Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams, Bono, James Brown, Mariah Carey, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Céline Dion, Elton John, Deep Purple, Meat Loaf, Queen, George Michael, Sting and the Spice Girls, to raise money for several UN causes. Concerts were held for War Child, and victims of war and civil unrest in Bosnia, Guatemala, Kosovo and Iraq. After the war in Bosnia, he financed and established the Pavarotti Music Centre in the southern city of Mostar to offer Bosnia's artists the opportunity to develop their skills. For these contributions, the city of Sarajevo named him an honorary citizen in 2006.^[22]

He performed at benefit concerts to raise money for victims of tragedies such as the Spitak earthquake that killed 25,000 people in northern Armenia in December 1988,^[23] and sang Gounod's Ave Maria with legendary French pop music star and ethnic Armenian Charles Aznavour.

He was a close friend of Diana, Princess of Wales. They raised money for the elimination of land mines worldwide. He was invited to sing at her funeral service, but declined to sing, as he felt he could not sing well "with his grief in his throat". Nonetheless, he attended the service.

In 1998, he was appointed the United Nations Messenger of Peace, using his fame to raise awareness of UN issues, including the Millennium Development Goals, HIV/AIDS, child rights, urban slums and poverty.^[24]

In 1999, Pavarotti performed a charity benefit concert in Beirut, to mark Lebanon's reemergence on the world stage after a brutal 15 year civil war. The largest concert held in Beirut since the end of the war, it was attended by 20,000 people who travelled from countries as distant as Saudi Arabia and Bulgaria.^[25]

In 2001, Pavarotti received the Nansen Medal from the UN High Commission for Refugees for his efforts raising money on behalf of refugees worldwide. Through benefit concerts and volunteer work, he has raised more than any other individual.^[26]

Other honours he received include the "Freedom of London Award" and The Red Cross "Award for Services to Humanity", for his work in raising money for that organization, and the 1998 "MusiCares Person of the Year", given to humanitarian heroes by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.^[27][28]

He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.^[29]

Death[link]

Wikinews has related news: Opera singer Luciano Pavarotti dies at age 71

While undertaking an international "farewell tour," Pavarotti was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in July 2006. The tenor fought back against the implications of this diagnosis, undergoing major abdominal surgery and making plans for the resumption and conclusion of his singing commitments.^[30] He died at his home in Modena on 6 September 2007. Within hours of his death, his manager, Terri Robson, noted in an e-mail statement, "The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life. In fitting with the approach that characterized his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness".^[31][32][33]

Pavarotti's funeral was held in Modena Cathedral. Romano Prodi and Kofi Annan attended.^[34] The Frecce Tricolori, the aerobatic demonstration team of the Italian Air Force, flew overhead, leaving green-white-red smoke trails. After a funeral procession through the centre of Modena, Pavarotti's coffin was taken the final ten kilometres to Montale Rangone, a village part of Castelnuovo Rangone, and was buried near his parents' grave. The funeral, in its entirety, was also telecast live on CNN. The Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival Hall flew black flags in mourning.^[35] Tributes were published by many opera houses, such as London's Royal Opera House.^[36] The Italian football giant Juventus F.C., of which Pavarotti was a lifelong fan, was represented at the funeral and posted a farewell message on its website which said: "Ciao Luciano, black-and-white heart" referring to the team's famous stripes when they play on their home ground.

Personal life[link]

On 13 December 2003, he married his former personal assistant, Nicoletta Mantovani (born 1969), with whom he already had a daughter, Alice. A second child, Riccardo, did not survive, because of complications at the time of birth in January 2003. Pavarotti is also survived by three other daughters by his first wife Adua, to whom he was married for 34 years: Lorenza, Cristina, and Giuliana. At the time of his death, he had one granddaughter.

Settlement of estate[link]

His first will was opened the day after his death and a second will, within the same month of September.^[37] He left an estate outside his native Modena, a villa in Pesaro, a flat in Monte Carlo, and three flats in New York City.^[38]

Pavarotti's widow's lawyers Giorgio Bernini, Anna Maria Bernini, and manager Terri Robson announced on 30 June 2008 that his family amicably settled his estate – 300 million euros ($ 474.2 million, including $15 million in U.S. assets). Pavarotti drafted two wills before his death: one divided his assets by Italian law, giving half to his second wife, Nicoletta Mantovani, and half to his four daughters; the second gave his U.S. holdings to Mantovani. The judge confirmed the compromise by the end of July 2008. However, a Pesaro public prosecutor, Massimo di Patria, investigated allegations that Pavarotti was not of sound mind when he signed the will.^[39][40][41] Pavarotti's estate has been settled "fairly", a lawyer for Pavarotti's widow, Nicoletta Mantovani, said in statements after reports of a dispute between Ms. Mantovani and his three daughters from his first marriage.^[42]

See also[link]

• Best selling music artists

Notes and references[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Luciano Pavarotti

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Luciano Pavarotti

• Official website
• Luciano Pavarotti at the Internet Movie Database
• Discography (Capon's Lists of Opera Recordings)
• Luciano Pavarotti discography at MusicBrainz
• The Times obituary
• Review of The King and I at theage.com.au
• The Pavarotti Story Decca Records
• Pavarotti Video Biography by National Italian American Foundation NIAF
• History of the Tenor - Sound Clips and Narration
• Funeral Mass of Luciano Pavarotti