There is another aspect to Maestro Pavarotti, however, that I think has been neglected in the obituaries and tribute programs: Pavarotti the human being. While the media enjoys focusing on the more titillating aspects of his life (like when he married his former assitant Nicoletta Mantovani, over thirty years his junior), they tend to gloss over the millions of dollars he raised for children in war-torn countries (including Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Liberia, Cambodia, and Tibet) with his “Pavarotti and Friends” concerts. In an interview I heard on NPR during a day-long Pavarotti tribute, the interviewer asked the Maestro if he didn’t feel that singing with the likes of the Spice Girls wasn’t demeaning to his Gift. With characteristic straightforwardness, Pavarotti essentially said, “have you seen how much money I’ve raised for underprivileged children?” In short, demeaning The Gift was not a consideration in the face of the sheer power his notoriety had to channel money where it was desperately needed. He said it to Larry King this way:

“Pavarotti and Friends got started because I am a — I am proud to be a messenger of peace for the United Nations. And at that time, precisely, I decide then I would like to raise money for the kids, one that from the world. And to do that, I realize then the only way, it was to call pop singer. Because if you call pop singer, you can sell the ticket, you can have television, you can sell the record. And we did.

“And we did.” That’s it. There was a job to be done, and we did it. I think he would have sung with the devil to help those kids, and I think he would have called it “a pleasure.”

This brings me to another beautiful aspect that has always struck me about Pavarotti’s character: His unmitigated delight in living. If you listen to interviews with Pavarotti, the words you hear most often are ones like “pleasure,” “enjoy,” “fantastic,” and “beautiful.” Singing for the Queen of England and singing with Bono are both “incredible;” recording a pop album and his young wife both “fantastic;” and of singing with the three tenors, “it’s a real pleasure. We enjoy.” He did not discriminate between classical and popular music, saying “there is only good music and bad music.” He tells Charlie Rose in an interview (incidentally, the only time that I remember seeing Charlie Rose seem nervous) that the tenor is his favorite part in opera because “the tenor is the center of love,” and describes one’s first role as being like a first kiss. It seems to me that from this bountiful center of conoisseurship and pleasure came Pavarotti’s astounding capacity to give pleasure to millions of others.

In the New York Times obituary by Bernard Holland, Holland writes that Pavarotti “shared the dominant gift for soliciting adoration from large numbers of people.” I beg to differ. I don’t think Pavarotti solicited adoration. He was simply and beautifully himself, and the adoration took care of itself.

Arrivederci, Maestro. La sua vita per la musica era una vita spesa bene.

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