Tribute to Luciano Pavarotti

This aria comes from Donizetti’s opera La Fille du Regiment. It is most famous for the difficult nine high C’s. Luciano Pavarotti’s ability to sing this aria help to make him famous and led to his nickname “King of the High C’s”. The video clip has stunning photos and the aria is positively chill inducing.

I saw Pavarotti live once with with good friends in Oklahaoma City. We were all studying voice at Wichita State University and we made the trip down by car on a Sunday afternoon. I was one of the drivers, and I was driving a 1975 Chevrolet Impala. The year was 1985. Pavarotti was wonderful that day. May God Bless Luciano Pavarotti and his family members. His was truly one of the greatest voices of the 20th Century.

Luciano Pavarotti: King of the High C’s, Dead at 71 and Mega-Link Fest

Tributes Pour In

A Passion for Pasta and People

King of the High C’s: Luciano Pavarotti, Dead at 71

First Bevelry Sills, now the great Luciano. Update: Read the Opera News Obituary.

Listen to Pavarotti sing Una Furtiva Lagrima

From the New York Times…And although he planned to spend his final years, in the operatic tradition, performing in a grand worldwide farewell tour, he completed only about half the tour, which began in 2004. Physical ailments, many occasioned by his weight and girth, limited his movement on stage and regularly forced him to cancel performances. By 1995, when he was at the Metropolitan Opera singing one of his favorite roles, Tonio in Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment,” high notes sometimes failed him, and there were controversies over downward transpositions of a notoriously dangerous and high-flying part.

Luciano Pavorotti set a new standard for greatness in the world of Opera. Forget all the over-blown commercialized world of “The Three Tenors.” Pavorotti gave definitive performances in Turnadot, L’elisir D’Amore, Tosca, La Boheme, Lucia di Lammermoor, and many Verdian roles. He was truly the King of the High C’s in his younger years, and he could sing the nine high C’s in La Fille du Regiment. God Bless Luciano Pavorotti. I’m sure he has found his high C (maybe even a high D) again, and is singing gloriously with the angels today.

Few, if any, opera singers have made as deep a mark on the collective consciousness of humanity as tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who died today at his home in Italy after his health took a severe turn for the worse this week. He was five weeks short of his 72nd birthday.