Wichita Falls (Texas) Times; Sunday books page, March 29, 1981.
Book Review: Fans love all of Pavarotti
PAVAROTTI: MY OWN STORY, by Luciano Pavarotti, with William Wright. Doubleday. $14.95.
By Gary N. Reese
Staff Writer
hen Luciano Pavarotti
hits one of his high notes, he won't crack that wine goblet held up in
front of his lips, but he will likely blow out the picture window in your
living room. And when he sings to his leading lady soprano, she swoons
and the audience goes wild. His fans mob him at his recitals, And
more than a handful of crazed women jump him in the backseat of his limousine.
Which is understandable. After all, the man weighs a good 300 pounds. Correction. In this chatty autobiography, Pavarotti points out that after he became a television star, he went on a crash diet and lost almost 80 pounds. That should bring him down to a comfortable 220. Which may make him less of a Pavarotti, but drives the cult of "Lucianissimo" into even grander proportions.
Pavarotti is that unexplainable phenomenon: an opera singer who has become almost a household word. In his native Italy, where the opera house remains a public forum, that is not unusual. But in America, such a singer comes along only once in a generation, and maybe not even that often.
Pavarotti's big break came in 1972 when he sang the role of Tonio in the Metropolitan Opera production of Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment, with its treacherous first act tenor aria. Nine high-Cs. No singer within recent memory had dared sing this high-vault mark of the tenor repertoire in the original key. The ascent to those nine high Cs is precipitous and exposed — there is no way a singer can scoop or slide up to the high notes. He has to take aim and shoot for the top. You either get 'em or you don't. Pavarotti got 'em, and with a clarion brilliance no one had dreamed possible. From that time on, he was The Voice, the King of the High Cs.
Does this book of memoires chart Pavarotti’s incredible rise from a baker's son in Modena to becoming the most celebrated tenor since Caruso?
Yes and no. With additional chapters by his friends and artistic colleagues, the book is full of testimonials to Pavarotti's artistic achievements. But the man himself stops short of that truculent self-analysis that would provide the clue to his success and insights into his fundamental character. He is too modest, he tells us, and the off-the-cuff informality of this book shows that this may be no vain posing on his part.
Pavarotti's book avoids the arcane technicalities of the opera stage,
but his many fans among the opera-going public will hardly feel slighted.
His book will be engaging reading for all, and is as broad in its scope
as the man himself.