King of the C

Rossini thought it sounded "like the squawk of a capon whose throat is being cut." John Ruskin used somewhat more elegant phrases: "Of bestial howling, and entirely frantic vomiting up of damned souls through their still carnal throats, I have heard more than, please God, I will ever endure the hearing of again." Both were complaining on the same score—the continuing struggle of Italian tenors trying to hit top notes at top volume.

The 18th century beginnings of Italian opera featured castrati, who could sing in loud treble voices. As the gelding of males for musical purposes fell into disuse, however, tenors continued to reach soprano notes by shifting into a much softer falsetto. It was for these part-falsetto voices that Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti wrote their most famous bel canto tenor roles, sometimes requiring an almost impossible F over high C. Only around 1820 did Tenor Domenico Donzelli startle his public by attempting high A with full chest force behind it, ultimately changing the course of operatic history. The new style put the primary emphasis on volume and thus removed most of bel canto opera from the reach of virtually all tenors who came later.

Blazing Highs. One of the few who can still master the art is a 36-year-old Italian named Luciano Pavarotti. In a Philadelphia performance last week of Bellini's I Puritani, which also starred Beverly Sills, Pavarotti's blazing high notes had the audience alternately gasping and yelling.

His voice is not a big one, as tenors go, but it is brilliant from top to bottom and as perfectly focused as a laser beam. He phrases elegantly, attacks tones cleanly; it seems never to have occurred to him that tenors are as noted for shouting and sobbing as for singing. All told, Pavarotti's particular set of virtues brings him closer to perfection than any other tenor in the world today.

Born in Modena, Pavarotti grew up within earshot of the local opera house. He began serious lessons at 19, and his father, a baker, drove him hard. "You have a good voice," he would say, "but Gigli and Caruso sang better." Pavarotti was struggling along on a schoolteacher's salary when a singing contest led to his 1961 debut in the Teatro Municipale in Reggio Emilia. Within a few months La Scala asked him to understudy three roles. Pavarotti boldly turned down the offer. He would wait, he said, for a major part.

While waiting, he was heard by Joan Sutherland's husband, Conductor Richard Bonynge, who signed him to sing opposite Sutherland in Lucia di Lammermoor in Miami. The Bonynges later took him on a 14-week tour of Australia, and Pavarotti claims that he has learned more from Soprano Sutherland than from any other singer. "He was always feeling Joan's tummy to find out how she breathed," says Bonynge.