euro|topics - Europe pays tribute to Pavarotti

05/07/2009

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Main focus of Friday, September 7, 2007

Europe pays tribute to Pavarotti

Italian star tenor Luciano Pavarotti died on September 7 aged 71. During the 1960s and 1970s he worked with the world's greatest conductors and opera singers, including Monserrat Caballé and Joan Sutherland. Later he made appearances with pop and rock stars. He toured the globe as part of the tenor-trio with José Carreras and Plácido Domingo.

La Repubblica - Italy

Edmondo Berselli contemplates the life of the tenor. "It is Pavarotti's spectacular disproportion that strikes us. Facing the echo of his death resounding all round the planet, it is clear that we are not celebrating an artist as much as the most famous Italian in the world. This disproportion lies in the meaning of his life, which was a daily demonstration of how an Italian from one of the most anonymous provinces was thrust into the limelight of the global show. ... He was a perfect 'glocal' icon, a media synthesis of the global and the local, thrown onto the market and before a limitless audience without nationality or taste, a multinational incarnated in a large and fragile body. ... If he had listened to the critics, maybe 'Big Luciano' could have been better, maybe even the best of all times. However, in an over-hyped era of surplus media, he was contented, in all modesty, to become colossal, contented to simply be big." (07/09/2007)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany

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." (07/09/2007)

Jyllands-Posten - Denmark

"Pavarotti was a phenomenon, a fantastic ambassador for the power of expression of the human voice," the newspaper writes. "He was able to make people take an interest in a type of music they thought they didn't like... There is nothing mystical about the fact that with the forward march of the media opera is experiencing a revival and attracting a new and wider audience. Pavarotti was the right man at the right time." (07/09/2007)

Hospodářské noviny - Czech Republic

"Pavarotti is dead. There is no other opera singer for whom these three words suffice to convey the message to the world," Petr Veber writes in his obituary. "Pavarotti was a unique example of the natural beauty of the human voice, but also of how important singing techniques are. ... Verdi, Donizetti, Belini and Puccini were his domain. And because he remained loyal to them, his voice never lost its brilliance. ... With his death the 20th century truly comes to an end; for his voice left an indellible mark upon it." (07/09/2007)

» To the complete press review of Friday, September 7, 2007

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