Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti, (1935- ). Italian operatic tenor. The son of an amateur tenor, Pavarotti made his debut in 1961 as Rodolfo in Puccini’s La Boheme, a role he repeated for his Covent Garden debut two years later. He toured Europe with the La Scala company in 1963-64 and Australia with Joan Sutherland in 1965. His US debut followed in 1968. By the 1990s Pavarotti’s performances and recordings had established him as one of the most successful opera stars in the world. In 1990 he became popular with a much wider audience when he sang (with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras) at a televised concert in Rome marking the World Cup. That same year his record of Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma’ went to the top of the pop charts in Britain, helping to bring opera to a new mass audience. His records have continued to sell in quantities usually only associated with pop stars.
