Synopsis
The famous tenor's wife offers unique insight into her husband's complex personality, his love of music, his early years, the pressures of his fame, and their family life
Reviews
Some 200 photographs, 160 in color and many of them charming family snapshots, combine with an affectionate (but not totally uncritical) text by his wife, written with freelancer Dallas, to spotlight the famed Italian tenor's personal life and commitment to making opera widely accessible. An appealing portrait emerges of a warm, outgoing man with a passion for food (when he cooks, according to his wife, "there is food on the wall as well as in the dishes, and cleaning up is not his specialty"), friends (during his annual holiday by the Adriatic Sea, as many as 25 people sit down to dinner every night), family, his hometown in northern Italy (the book includes eye-popping pictures of his palatial residence there) and, of course, his art, which he insists is more appreciated by those who line up for hours to buy the cheapest seats than by those who pay top dollar to sit "down in the suits." Adua Pavarotti, who runs a management company that represents young singers as well as coordinates her husband's appearances, doesn't reveal anything particularly new about the tenor or his astonishing voice, but this agreeable, attractively designed book will be enjoyed by fans.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Italian opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti is sympathetically portrayed here by his wife of more than 30 years. Her text is secondary to the many photographs, which include a few early black and whites from the family album, plus many more recent images in color. Fame, family, and fortune shine forth from these portraits of an ebullient singer who lives life to the fullest. This is at least the third book to capitalize on Pavarotti's celebrity status. An earlier pictorial biography, Martin Mayer's Grandissimo Pavarotti ( LJ 11/1/86), emphasizes the musical career, as does the singer's decade-old biography, Pavarotti: My Own Story ( LJ 3/1/81. o.p.). A decade is a very long time in an opera singer's career, so this new work should find a niche in music collections with a need for current, popular material, or in collections with celebrity biographies.
- James E. Ross, Seattle P.L.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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