Pavarotti’s Not Going Out as a Class Act

A few years ago, a friend of mine had composer Ned Rorem over for dinner. As an expatriate in Paris in the 1950s, Rorem had attracted as much attention for his physical beauty as for his music. Now, however, the aging Rorem would not stop complaining about his wrinkles. Exasperated, my friend said, “Oh, Ned, stop it! You finally look interesting.”

That seems to be a lesson that Luciano Pavarotti, who had what may have been the most beautiful tenor voice of the 20th century, never learned. By canceling a gala appearance in Puccini’s “Tosca” at the Metropolitan Opera an hour before curtain Saturday night, Pavarotti has apparently ended his opera career with a singular lack of grace. The 66-year-old tenor has no further opera performances scheduled, and none are expected. Although he will continue to perform in concert, his last operatic role will undoubtedly be that of Cavaradossi in a Royal Opera production of “Tosca” four months ago in London.

Pavarotti’s performances at Covent Garden were not a disaster, which is one reason why his New York dates were so widely anticipated. The Met was sold out; a black-tie audience had paid as much as $1,500 a ticket; 3,000 fans were gathered in Lincoln Center’s plaza, where the performance was broadcast on a large video screen. And had Pavarotti sung, perhaps he would have pleased his nostalgic New York fans as much as he pleased his nostalgic London fans.

I happened to be at the final Pavarotti “Tosca,” Jan. 21 in London. The production, created for Maria Callas 39 years ago, may have been a tattered wreck, but the recently renovated Covent Garden looked spic and span. And Pavarotti appeared to have undergone something of a renovation himself. He moved with more agility onstage than he had in years, and his voice displayed a bit of the old Pavarotti bloom. The problem was that he was profoundly uninteresting, the operatic equivalent of excessive Botox injections that not only removed wrinkles but also smoothed out expressivity.

Expectations were exceedingly low. For a decade, Pavarotti had been a pathetic figure onstage. His weight, his bad knees, his loss of high notes and his general intellectual malaise meant that even when he didn’t cancel (which was often), he still might not seem all there. He would prop himself against the scenery and gobble slices of apples or sip water hidden in the props. Acting was the furthest thing from his mind. It was all he could do to prepare himself for each breath and get through a phrase.

At Covent Garden, Pavarotti looked and sounded as though he had gotten a new lease on life. He endeared himself to his fans for not canceling, even though his mother had died just before opening night. Maybe it was in her honor that he made a special effort. Not only did he show up for all four performances of the opera, it almost felt like the old times when his sheer love of being onstage made him winning.

But the fact is, he had very little to give. He has always been a singer with phenomenal natural gifts and wonderful musicality but little curiosity. And so on this occasion when he appeared to dig deep into himself to portray Cavaradossi, a role he has sung hundreds of times over the past 35 years, it wasn’t to find some new essence of the painter and political revolutionary of Puccini’s opera. It was rather a younger, wrinkle-free Pavarotti he hoped to resurrect. He mustered what he could to sing rounded phrases. He ambled onstage, an advertisement for quality knee surgery. Still, there was not one instant when he was Cavaradossi. A wrinkled but wiser star might actually have been interesting, but what we got was a plastic Pavarotti of the past.

Pavarotti’s denial of his current physical state--evident in his unwillingness to announce that his opera career has ended--is another part of what made the Met cancellation so dispiriting. He had been scheduled to sing twice, Wednesday and for the gala closing of the Met’s season, Saturday. On Wednesday night, he gave 90 minutes’ notice, claiming he had caught the flu at the dress rehearsal. When the Met general manager, Joseph Volpe, stepped onstage to announce that an understudy would sing, he was drowned out by angry boos.

New York quickly became caught up in the saga of whether Pavarotti would appear Saturday. Gamblers began taking bets. The Met flew in a hot young tenor, Salvatore Licitra, from Milan, as insurance. The banner headline in Friday’s New York Post was “Fat Man Won’t Sing.” All day Saturday, Pavarotti reportedly vacillated, monitoring his congestion. Less than an hour before curtain, Licitra got word that he would be making his Met debut. He had just enough time for a quick discussion with the conductor, James Levine, and to meet his Tosca, soprano Maria Guleghini, for the first time.

The 33-year-old Licitra is an exciting singer on a new recording of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.” And perhaps Pavarotti’s clumsy cancellation will pass on the torch to a new tenor for a new era. But it would have been far more satisfying if the older tenor would have at least faced his audience Saturday, as Volpe had asked him to do, and explained his condition and given his blessing to the new kid.

Instead, we’re left with the sorry situation of a has-been who succumbed to the excesses of stardom. And it’s hard to feel sorry for a singer who can still earn $100,000 or more a night in less-demanding concert appearances. At those concerts, where the money is many times what it is in opera (the top Met fee is $14,000), Pavarotti rarely cancels.