His “Nessun dorma” was the twentieth century’s definitive one—the one that launched a thousand imitators.
So it caused a bit of a flurry this week when The Guardian reported on a new book about Luciano Pavarotti that says the tenor was lip-synching a performance of that aria at the 2006 Turin Olympics. Not feeling well enough to perform live, Pavarotti reportedly recorded the aria days before the performance, and the orchestra pre-recorded its parts, too. So the performance that turned out to be the tenor’s last was canned.
“The orchestra pretended to play for the audience, I pretended to conduct and Luciano pretended to sing. The effect was wonderful,” writes conductor Leone Magiera in the book, Pavarotti Visto da Vicino. read more
subscribe to RSS feed
find SundayArts on Facebook
