The death of Luciano Pavarotti at age 71 one is a great loss to the world of music. I was sitting in the car outside the daughters school yesterday waiting to collect them and the 3:00 news came on to let us know he’d died an hour or so before. Pavarotti never really recovered from the operation he’d had to combat pancreatic cancer, but still managed to perform last year.
He really had a charismatic, almost magical, presence, a great voice and a pleasant personality overall. Generally he just had a ‘gift’ and he shared it with us. I’m glad to have heard him.
Idol winner Paul Potts has an interesting voice… made all the better because of his strong Welsh accent… but he’ll never sing like Pavarotti. I suppose in terms of ‘popular appeal’ the only male classical singer I can recall who would come close would have been Mario Lanza but while he was famous and made his name in movies as much as anywhere else, his voice wasn’t in the same class. Other singers such as Maria Callas and Anna Moffo also had great voices, but there is something special about a rich tenor voice that the women just don’t have… in the same way a male soprano can’t compete with a great woman. The voice Pavarotti was blessed with just had a certain something about it that made it exceptional. His death is a dreadful loss. He’ll be greatly missed.
The Eclectic Interweb 