Then there were two...tenors

So Luciano Pavarotti is gone.

I have seen Placido Domingo several times, in Chicago and in Omaha; as Ramses, Don Jose, Hoffman, and Samson. We would have seen Pavarotti at the Chicago Lyric, but "The King of Cancellations" lived up to his name. So I never saw him perform and from what some are saying, that may be just as well. It would have been hard to accept him visually as a romantic lead. On that score, Domingo and Carreras had him beat hands down. But that voice! At its prime, it was the aural equivalent of extra virgin olive oil.

"There were tenors, and then there was Pavarotti," Franco Zeffirelli said. Pavarotti once hit nine high Cs in a row during a 1972 Met performance of Fille du Régiment. To my mind, that, and not "Nessun Dorma" is his signature piece.

No one will ever top Franco Corelli as tenor god in my operatic pantheon; and no one can top Placido Domingo for sheer joy of singing, good humor and all around humanity. But I will remember Pavarotti for those high C's, for his Christmas concerts singing "Gesù Bambino" surrounded by boy sopranos, and for "Una Furtiva Lagrima." That was one of my father's favorite arias. May Luciano sing it for him tonight among the angels.

See also Andrew Tomassini's appraisal