Opera's Golden Tenor

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After Australia, Pavarotti was ready for a string of major debuts: La Scala in 1965, San Francisco in 1967, the Metropolitan in 1968. Although his Met engagement, like most of the others, was in his lucky opera, La Bohème, he caught Hong Kong flu and had to withdraw halfway through the second performance. It took him three years to overcome that anticlimactic beginning at the house. But when he did, in a production of The Daughter of the Regiment with Sutherland, he set New York on its critical ear with a spectacular series of nine high Cs in a single aria. With no little help from the publicity mills, Pavarotti the supertenor was on his way.

A monumental ego is built into a performing temperament like Pavarotti's—it has to be. Yet his associates agree that he has succumbed to no more than a mild case of "tenoritis." Last month, while recording Rossini's William Tell in London, he flared up over the balance between his voice and the orchestra. "Why do 1 sound as if I'm singing in another room?" he shouted after hearing a playback. When the producer defended the balance, Pavarotti slammed his score shut and stomped out of the studio. But the next day he was back to try again. "Luciano is not temperamental," says one recording executive. "But he has a tendency to push things to see what he can gain. If he fails, he will back down."

Vocally, Pavarotti in recent years has skillfully negotiated the most treacherous shoals that face a tenor. Early in his career he was a classic tenore lirico, ideally suited to lighter lyric roles like Rodolfo, and florid bel canto roles like Nemorino in L'Elisir d'Amore. With age, however, a tenor's voice takes on a heavier tone and darker coloration. By the time he is in his 40s, a tenore lirico is usually ready for roles in the intermediate spin to (pushed) range, like Cavaradossi in Tosca, and maybe even in the forceful, baritonal tenore drammatico category, like the title role of Otello. But he must use extreme care, lest he damage the muscles of ins vocal mechanism. Many a promising Rodolfo who was too eager to tackle roles beyond his vocal weight is today running a restaurant or sitting at a desk on the fringes of the music business.

Pavarotti has been proceeding judiciously, with a Masked Ball here, a Turandot there and, of course, the San Francisco La Gioconda. There are some roles he will sing in the relaxed conditions of the recording studio but not onstage, as in William Tell, which he describes as a "scassavoce"—a voice buster. If he does not show to advantage in a new role he may shelve it for a while, as he seems to be doing with Manrico in Il Trovatore.