Perhaps the only voice of the century to rival the great Caruso in sheer magnitude:
"Vestia La Giubba" from Pagliacci by Ruggerio Leoncavallo [his wife has betrayed him with another and he has to go on stage, with his heart breaking, to play the part of the clown]
"Una Furtiva Lagrima" from L'elisir d'amore by Gaetano Donizetti
[If I find the Panis Angelicus with a boys choir, Les Petits Chanteur du Mont-Royal, and an adult choir, Les Disciples de Massenet, I'll post that, as it is one exceptionally balanced creation (I think). Also, O Solo Mio, which is a song that seems to have his heart in it (to me).]
There are some fine versions of "O Solo Mio" now available, but I'll choose this one. It shows the pros missing their entrances and exits and the total fun and treachery of going on stage with rivals:
For fun, p-dog encourages me not to forget these train wrecks. Fair Warning! (and again, just for fun, no harm intended):
The Cranberry's
Simon La Bon [just wait for it, you'll hear ... ]
Pavarotti: A Voice for the Ages, Time Magazine, Christopher Porterfield
A six-footer who weighed 300 pounds or more for much of his life, he had a Rabelaisian appetite for food and fun. Offstage he clowned on TV talk shows, appeared in commercials and movies, and generated nonstop tabloid copy. Reports of his dietary struggles and weight fluctuations circulated like a runaway Dow Jones average: up 25, down 80, up 60. He was a household name to millions of people who had never seen the inside of an opera house.
Pavarotti: The final curtain, The Independent, Peter Popham and ... Herbert Breslin
Finally came the turn of New York's Metropolitan Opera House, in a performance that entered history: when, on 17 February 1972, he played the peasant Tonio in Donizetti's La fille du régiment opposite Joan Sutherland, and wowed the house with his fluid and natural singing of nine successive top Cs in the introductory aria. At the opera's conclusion he was called for a record 17 curtain calls, and the mighty career of Luciano Pavarotti was well and truly launched.
Luciano thinks about food all the time. It's not just that he likes to eat: he loves to smell food, to touch food, to prepare food, to think about food, to talk about food. When he comes into a room, he begins sniffing like a dog, and his first question is, "What smells so good?"
"I smell so good, Luciano," I used to say. It didn't stop him for a minute. He would already be past me and into the kitchen, lifting the lids on all the pots and inhaling the fragrant steam from whatever was cooking. There was always something cooking. To invite Luciano Pavarotti over without cooking something would be unthinkable.
Richard Speer, in Salon
While purists scoffed at such claims, I can offer one instance in which they were wrong and Pavarotti was right, for I was one of those young converts pulled into cultural waters by the siren song of that golden voice. Pavarotti was my gateway drug.
Richard Dyer gushes in the Globe:
There were many great tenors in the second half of the 20th century, but for millions of people Luciano Pavarotti was the main man, the only one. His singing gave more pleasure to more people for a longer period of time than any other classical singer in history. ...
During his prime, his voice was incomparable, clear and ringing and suffused with sunlight all the way up to high C and beyond; his clear and fervent delivery of Italian words was a model, and so was his legato. His voice, infused with emotion, made love to every soprano he sang with and to every audience he sang to.
