Last week marked the passing of one of the greatest voices the world has ever known… Luciano Pavarotti.
If you’ve not ever heard him sing,
click here for a wonderful sampling of his talent…a signature performance of the aria Nessun Dorma from the Puccini opera Turandot. One of my fav NON-classical offerings of Pavarotti is the duet between he and Bono of U2:
Miss Sarajevo.
Pavarotti was a well-known character and larger than life in many ways. Christopher Hearne, Jr., ran the blurb below (w/ a local connection!) in his Kansas City Star column this a.m.:Fore!
In another life Luciano Pavarotti might have been a race car driver.
When he played the Midland in the late '80s, staffer Marti Dolinar was called upon to transport the king-sized tenor down a long circular ramp to the Midland dressing room area.
"So we rented a golf cart, and when he got dropped off at the Midland he got in the golf cart, and I started driving him down. I was kind of having a hard time making the first turn. You know I had to stop and back it up a couple of times, and finally he looks over at me with this frustrated look and says, 'Get out. Let me drive.' So he slides over and wheels his way down to the stage area like he's a Formula 1 driver. Then he looked at me and said 'That's how you drive a golf cart.'"
The bottom line: He was a great singer and a helluva golf cart driver.
"I think a life in music is a life beautifully spent and this is what I have devoted my life to."
Luciano Pavarotti
1935 – 2007
It's True! One of our tenors sang for Luciano on Sunday, it was beautiful...it was Italian...and he caught a frog in the middle of one section. It was still great! God just needed that voice in Heaven for a while....
ReplyDeleteit seems like so many of the great ones have died in the last few years...who will be the great ones for the next generation?
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