It just doesn't have that ring, does it?
I have no witty or amusing stories of personal encounters with the late, great Maestro Pavarotti. My future- husband and I once chased Jose Carreras down a Heidelberg street to get his autograph, and a college friend of mine asked Placido Domingo to sign his hand because he forgot to bring paper to the crowded stage door at the Vienna State Opera House. (Domingo's answer? An extremely dismissive, Spanish-accented "No.") Still, doesn't the world seem diminished without Luciano Pavarotti, the King of the High Cs?
I'll confess--I've never been much for tenors. (Sorry, Alex.) I was always a bad-boy-baritone kind of girl. All those brave tenor heroes and leading men were just tiresome. Give me Don Giovanni and Evgeni Onegin any day. Even so, I bought the "Three Tenors" albums and enjoyed the hell out of them. I know that a lot of people found them unseemly, and I had my laugh on the "My Way" trio, but even material on the schlocky side couldn't hide The Voice. It was a marvel.
For me, Pavarotti is one of the clearest examples out there of somebody who "had it," with "it" being that indefinable vocal quality that marks the difference between competence and talent and true greatness. It's not as if his parents had him in Kindermusik at the age of 6 months and doing Suzuki violin at 4. From all that I've read, he didn't even start studying voice until he was 19 years old. You can't create a Pavarotti. You can give a kid every advantage and all the exposure, and you might be able to guarantee competence, but you can never manufacture greatness. Frustrating, isn't it?
Certainly it was one of my principle frustrations when I studied music. I was competent enough to know that I didn't "have it" and smart enough to realize that I didn't have a chance of practicing/studying/strong-arming my way into "it". What was maybe more frustrating was encountering greatness and true talent and seeing it squandered. I went to school with a few cases like that and cursed the gods for combining amazing abilities with a lack of ambition to use it. If I had had that kind of talent--I would often say to myself--I'd be singing at the Met right now. But the two must go together. The life of a professional musician is not an easy one, and even the greatest talent in the world must have the drive to take that talent somewhere.
Thank heaven for all of us that Maestro Pavarotti had both in spades. There must be some damn musical spectacular in the works upstairs.