The Life and Death of Classical Music (40 page)

Then, for reasons probably connected with personal upheavals, he lost it. Each year at Mantua, his young secretary and eventual second wife organized an orgy of Pavarotti and Friends which brought the uncomfortable fat cat together in duets with sleek lions of the pop world, ostensibly in some charitable cause. George Michael and Joe Cocker, Mariah Carey and Boyzone, were just a few of his unsuitable partners.

Most odious of all was Pavarotti’s duet with the dead. In this Ultimate Collection the great man took on a tape of Frank Sinatra in My Way. Sinatra was way past his best on this late track, the voice coarsened by tobacco, the tenderness wrinkled. Pavarotti, likewise, was a patina of his mighty self, covering his cracks with tasteless vibrato and barely bothering to pronounce English vowels. The effect is more embarrassing than unpleasant, like seeing an old man’s nakedness haplessly uncovered. You don’t want to look again, but you know it won’t go away. This is a record of sorts, an indelible stain that will linger for all time on the voice of the century.

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AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL, APRIL 2007

Copyright copy 2007 by Norman Lebrecht

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The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for
The Life and Death of Classical Music
is on file at the Library of Congress.

eISBN: 978-0-307-48746-9

Author photograph © Sam Long

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