|
A Busby Berkeley spectacle
with flashes of Fellini, it was directed by Luca Tommasini, who designs
and choreographs routines for performers such as Madonna, Kylie Minogue
and Ricky Martin. They love this stuff in Europe. And in North America,
too: The album hit No. 2 on the Billboard classical crossover charts last
week. Some blends are more successful than others. Caruso, a piece
about the final days of the famed tenor Enrico Caruso, features a subtly
elegiac guitar track by Jeff Beck that counterbalances Pavarotti's
emotional hyperbole. The singer's record company had been trying to get
him to record a crossover album for 15 or 20 years. One day, his third
daughter Giuliani, 38, brought him a recording of Caruso, which he
says convinced him that pop need not be frivolous. He recorded the song
two days later, but it took another few years before the album was
finished. The problem, Pavarotti says, is that, "I do not like to make an
album without two happy songs." So the album is 11 parts grandly tragic
and two parts happy, which is roughly how Pavarotti comes across in
person, like a deflated court jester caught resting backstage between
manic pranks. Weeds of mortality poke through the cracks of his ego. His
hair is unnaturally black, his eyebrows two ink smudges above weary eyes.
When he speaks, he will pause as if lost in thought.
|
Sadness
rims the lighter moments of his life, including the premature birth of
Alice, whose twin brother died shortly after being delivered because of a
lack of oxygen in the womb. So when crinkles creep in at the corners of
his eyes as he beams about Alice, you can't help but wonder if he is also
thinking of the only son he ever had. Which is not to deny he adores his
daughter. He waves a hand toward the Baldwin grand piano, on which sits a
forest of photo frames holding snapshots from his encounters with the rich
and powerful. The five nearest to his desk used to hold pictures of
"presidents or super-important people," he boasts. Now, Alice's beatific,
intelligent smile fills the frame. "Look at that, she is not a little more
than a baby," he murmurs. "But she is investigating you, she is watching
you. My God, she is watching you. She just follows everything you do. She
is curious, like the father." He doesn't change or feed Alice, but he
sings to her when she is crying: scales, arias, a nursery tune, anything.
As long as he sings loudly enough, he says, she'll stop crying.
He
has three daughters with his former wife, ranging in age from 38 to 42.
"With the other daughters, I was not home enough," he admits, eyes growing
grey with the memory. "I understand that at the time, but even more now
that I have Alice. She is staying on this table all the day long and we
play together. I have never done this with my daughters, I did not have
time. I was always arriving one day to change the luggage and leaving."
After wandering the world through his career -- he still has homes in New
York, Monte Carlo and Modena, Italy, -- Pavarotti is now building a new
house in Modena for Nicoletta and Alice, where he will move on his
retirement in 2005.