Maryna Kagan Instructor: R. George MUS 103016 Nov 12, 2014
The Luciano Pavarotti`s Unique Voice There are many famous opera singers in the world. But Luciano Pavarotti is the one whom the majority of people, even those who know nothing about classical music or opera, will choose as the best opera singer of all times.
There are many disputes about what made Luciano Pavarotti such a popular superstar
among the inexperienced in opera general public. How this “sweet, foodloving man with a golden voice, who couldn't read music”, made millions of regular people all over the globe listen to the opera on the stadiums? For example he performed his signature aria Nessun Dorma from the Puccini`s lebretto “Turandot” at the opening ceremony the 1990th FIFA World Cup in Italy as the most wanted superstar (Pareles). But regular people might not even know that Turandot is the name of a beautiful coldhearted femme fatale princess, who was asking every prince who wanted to marry her to solve three riddles, and if he was not able to do it, he was ordered to be beheaded. And Pavarotti sings this aria as Calaf, the "Unknown Prince", who falls in love with
Turandot and answers those three riddles correctly, but instead of marrying the Peking princess right away, he asks her to name him or he will die. Naturally, the Prince's statement is poetic.
The aria Nessun dorma appears when Turandot hasn't figured out yet that this request is a poetic metaphor of her love in return, and still thinks that she just has to get someone to reveal the
Prince's name and then she can chop his head off. So she puts out a decree that no one in Peking is allowed to sleep until the name is revealed. The words "nessun dorma", from which Pavarotti starts this piece, are translated from Italian into English as “no one sleeps”(Ashbrook). This aria is a quintessence of the whole opera. It gives us a hint to the meaning of his secret. By singing it
Prince makes a powerful statement that he wants to defeat Turandot`s coldhearted defensiveness and have her fall in love with him. To notice all that, the listeners have to do some serious research and, actually, to see the whole opera itself many times, because it's so heavily poetic and if they don’t know Italian it is very hard to follow. Yet, Pavarotti turned people, who have never gone to the theater, into the opera fans because he could express even the deepest feelings of his character with his voice only (Porterfield).
Most people would recognize his brilliant voice right away because of its uniqueness. His
clear, penetrating timbre could arise with the resonance in the ringing high his famous Cs and, at the same time, it was gorgeously warm and romantic. In Nessun dorma he sang two of the highest notes in the tenor rangeB4 followed by A4. It was the difficult aria to sing, but Pavarotti sang it with such ease, such clarity that it seemed doable for any singer. By watching Paul Potts' performance of Nessun dorma on a popular television show, “Britain's Got Talent”, everybody can understand that Pavarotti`s voice cannot be compared even with
