Europe pays tribute to Pavarotti

With all the admiration for Luciano Pavarotti Jürgen Kesting thinks there is a place for criticism of the tenor. "And what was the upshot of this shining and besmirched career? He trivialised the myth of the tenor in the same way the telenovela has trivialised the tragedy. A magical verse written by the Russian futurist Velemir Chlebnikov and put to music by Luigi Nono goes: 'When it dies, grass wilts. / When they die, horses wheeze. / When they die, suns darken. / When they die, people sing.' Nothing remains of this reflection of the existential, of song as secularised prayer, but a surrogate. Pavarotti's 'vinceeeeee-roooo' from the 'Nessun dorma' aria was the code for the global commercialisation of song."

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