0.cached.png
By Katrine Ames
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
ON A NARROW ROAD in the Connecticut woods, where the ice lay thick as a Neanderthal skull, a long line of cars snaked toward the Foxwoods Resort Casino. Inside, the audience began filling the cavernous bingo hall, made over for the evening as a concert space at the country's most profitable gambling joint. When word came that traffic would delay the main event, some people stirred restlessly. These were high rollers who had coughed up $500 for a seat down front and $150 to sit 175 rows back, just out of earshot of the ping-ping of slot machines. What they were waiting for (and he has become as much a what as a who) was, in a word--emblazoned in gold on the program--PAVAROTTI.
Of course, when Lucky Luciano strolled onstage in an acre of white tie, tails and trademark hankie, a lot of people couldn't see him, except on large video screens. They couldn't really hear him, either, since the amplified sound bore a creepy resemblance to that of a walkie-talkie made from two tin cans and a string. On the other hand, no one seemed to care. At 60, Pavarotti can still produce a melting mezza voce, but this crowd was hungry for volume, the more, the better. At Pavarotti events, as distinct from operas or his more "serious" recitals, refinement is not a defining factor. And at Foxwoods last week, the event bordered on the grotesque. Despite the familiar program (opera lite, heavy on the Puccini), he often had to refer to a score. The occasional desertion of a high note was unimportant; the absence of the legendary Pavarotti charm was not. For much of the evening, the usually effervescent tenor performed on automatic pilot, with little emotional connection to his audience. He didn't phone in the performance-he faxed it. (The program notes didn't help. Rodolfo in "La Bohme," for instance, was described as "a poor poet who lives in poverty.")
Read More on News
What's simultaneously sad and enraging about this--not to mention the spectacle of his cavorting in Barbados last month with his 26-year-old secretary, Nicoletta Mantovani--is that it's so unnecessary. Maybe he's running scared: many singers can't stomach the winding down of a career. It's true that he hasn't quite the range he once had, and that a bit of the sheen is gone, but he still has one of the most glorious voices of the century. To his credit, he's taking on a new role, Andrea Chnier, next month at the Metropolitan Opera, but he should think twice about a work like "Daughter of the Regiment" with its fiendish string of high C's. Pavarotti is justly famous for helping to bring opera to the masses. But the masses can't pay $150 (never mind $500) a pop, and for the Foxwoods pap, which resembles opera the way mud wrestling resembles ballet, they shouldn't. Far worse than the shamelessly commercial, over-the-top "3 Tenors" concerts, where he teams up with Plcido Domingo and Jos Carreras, a concert like this is a distortion of music. For less than the price of the cheapest Foxwoods ticket, you can sit in the front row of the Met and hear music played in context, without amplification and with subtitles.
Opera singers have always loved to travel in pop territory. If Pavarotti's performance with Sting or, God help us, his 1982 movie, "Yes, Giorgio," steers some people to classical music, hurrah. But there's a line in the sand-onstage and in Barbados-and Pavarotti has crossed it. Rumored to be a womanizer, last month he admitted to an affair with Mantovani. "She is my favorite of my harem," the father of three daughters (all older than Mantovani) told the Italian magazine Chi. His wife, Adua, countered: "I just can't recognize him." They have separated their assets, though Adua denies that she has filed for "personal separation."
But a personal separation is precisely what Pavarotti will eventually have to make from his career. The opera world runs on schadenfreude and sycophancy: while one group exults in the decline of a star, another insists it isn't happening. At a recent press conference in Italy, Pavarotti said he'll know when to retire: "The audience will tell me." Well no, they won't. For every one who says, "Basta, Luciano," two others will insist, "You never sound- ed better." To which of those voices will he listen?
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines