When he sings that he’ll tell Mimì in a couple of words who he is, Pavarotti’s high note is so arrestingly golden that it finally makes sense that, when he asks if he should keep talking, she’s speechless. But the life force - the potent, perspiring sincerity that would be even clearer once he got on TV - is thrilling. His extremes are more intense than Björling’s refined intimacy - cheaper, even. Listen to Jussi Björling on the treasured 1956 recording conducted by Thomas Beecham, letting his Mimì in on his love like he’s sharing a secret.ījörling sang it like it was a tender black-and-white romance, a scene from “Casablanca.” Pavarotti’s rendition, on a 1972 set led by Herbert von Karajan, is in wide-screen Technicolor. Other tenors sang “Che gelida manina,” that aria from “La Bohème,” with more conversational intimacy. From “Fille” to his performance at the World Cup, Pavarotti’s career - the high and the low, and the highs and the lows - demonstrated that they’re ultimately inseparable.Įven at his greatest, in passages I hear in my head all the time, he carried within him the stadium shows of his later years. Opera, like gymnastics and ballet, intertwines measurable bodily achievement - sticking the landing, hitting the high note - and harder-to-define “artistry.” Sometimes music critics feel guilty about the “athletic” stuff, as if we’re simply Olympics judges holding up numbers after a vault.īut the artistry emerges from the athletics, however uneasily, and the athletics from the artistry.
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