Indeed - and mine, too, largely - but did LP himself really "pretend [that] he was a proselytiser for the overarching experience that is opera"? I don't think so. Without disagreeing with this writer, I do think it fair to point out that LP himself seemed not to entertain any arrogant notion that he had done - or, for that matter, could do - any such thing, as far as I am aware.
For what it's worth (which is probably very little), here's what I wrote in another place on the day following that of his death:
PAVAROTTI R.I.P. (1935-2007)
It is a strange thing among vocal artists that one finds from time to time a singer whose vocal ability far outweighs his/her general musical intelligence. Now I’m not suggesting that Pavarotti lacked musical intelligence altogether – just that what he did appear to have in that department was fairly ordinary whereas the instrument itself was beyond outstanding. One has only to recognise – and rather bemoan – the limits to his repertoire and then listen to him in the things that he did best to realise that.
The sheer size of his voice, which was, like certain other aspects of the man himself, larger than life, was in itself extraordinary, yet there was more to it than just that; yes, he could indeed sing with immense delicacy when appropriate and still project splendidly, yet can you imagine a Pavarotti lieder recital? The fact that he would have given us no such thing was certainly not due to any inability to scale things down.
One of England’s great sopranos of the recent past, Dame Eva Turner, is quoted as having once said that a “Wagnerian soprano” was one who could excel in Bach, Schubert and Fauré as well as Wagner – in other words “the compleat soprano”. Had Pavarotti explored Wagner, French song and Austro-German lied, Bach, Handel, etc. successfully and sung more Mozart than he did, he might have become one of the greatest performers of our time. He didn’t. The comparison with the recently deceased Rostropovich is salutary here – another performer with an absolutely massive sound when needed and who could project better than almost any soloist, yet the repertoire in which he excelled was vast. Can you imagine Pavarotti premièring scores of new works as Rostropovich did? No – and even his operatic rôles were confined almost exclusively to Romantic Italian repertoire in which he had for the most part to depend upon his legendary vocal skills alone to do the “acting”, since it was generally accepted that he simply couldn’t act.
As to the "popularising" stuff – well, I am convinced that he did neither himself nor “classical music” in general nor opera in particular any great favours by this part of his work. Does anyone really imagine that his crossover work, his “three Tenors” appearances or the "Pavarotti in the park" indulgences – most of which contained some truly remarkable singing – has encouraged anyone who would never otherwise have thought of doing so to attend productions of
Die Soldaten,
Death in Venice or
King Priam – or
Pelléas et Mélisande,
Siegfried or
Falstaff – or
Cosí fan Tutte or
Semele? Not a chance! No more of a chance, indeed, than of anyone listening to a certain fragment of Puccini’s
Turandot and thinking "I must go and see the opera". This kind of thing was – and always is – sheer commercialism as an "art"-form in itself, no more, no less. The fact that his singing it in was often so glorious was perhaps the nearest it got to any kind of redeeming factor. That said, I’m not sure that Pavarotti himself expected that this kind of work would necessarily "bring people to the opera houses" either; he rarely seemed to give any impression of being pompous or self-aggrandising. I think that he just enjoyed himself doing it and the pay cheques weren’t exactly too much of a disincentive either. I wouldn’t wish to discourage such a wonderful singer from enjoying himself or even from being fabulously well paid for so doing, but let’s just put it all into appropriate perspective.
The "popularising" singer is, of course, by no means a novel phenomenon. Even before the days of Mario Lanza, John McCormack used to do this kind of thing many years ago with his incessant popular ditties that simply did not and could not use more than a tiny fraction of his immense vocal talent – and there has been no shortage of others. It is an affliction that seems to manifest itself in singers rather more often, more consistently and more noticeably than in instrumentalists. By the "popularising" singer here I mean the type that ends up being as well or even better known for that kind of work than for the rest of it.
OK, so Pavarotti loved football. Fine. So, as it happens, did Shostakovich. Shostakovich, however, never envisaged his symphonies – still less his string quartets – being performed at football stadia before tens of thousands of adoring fans at a time. Just as well, really. Music is one thing and football is another. That said, mention of Dmitry Dmitreyevich in this context reminds me of the wonderful story told me by a fellow Scotsman who was present at the time of the big Shostakovich retrospective at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival at which the recently emerged Fourth Symphony (1935-36) was to receive its eagerly anticipated UK première. Shostakovich himself was obviously expected to attend rehearsals but was nowhere to be found. He did turn up eventually but the rehearsals were over by then. He explained that he simply had to go instead to see Rangers playing Celtic and then apparently offered some comparisons between these two teams and Moscow Dynamo. He did attend the performance of his Fourth Symphony, though.
Anyway, the airwaves in UK yesterday were indeed filled beyond bursting point with Incessant Dorma and no doubt even the best Indian restaurants in Britain were serving Nessun Korma in tribute to him. Perhaps this kind of thing might almost even encourage some of us to recognise that one of the best things about Busoni’s
Turandot (which, incidentally, predates his compatriot and near-contemporary Puccini’s far better known one by just a few years) is its merciful lack of
Nessun Dorma...
All we really need to do is remember that astonishing and instantly recognisable voice – and we are not likely to forget it in any great hurry.
If there was any positive result from his "populist" work it must surely have been his bringing of fabulous singing to many millions of people; even then, a lot of those many millions would know and understand insufficient of the singer's art and science fully and properly to appreciate just how marvellous an instrument LP's voice was when at its peak.
Best,
Alistair
