Luciano Pavarotti was an Italian tenor born in Modena in northern Italy. He did not read music well and had trouble learning the words of the arias he sang. Decca was his record label, which marketed him as "king of the high Cs". He had appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek before the concert that made him a global phenomenon.
On July 7th 1990 Pavarotti performed alongside Plácido Domingo and José Carreras at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, in a concert held on the eve of the football World Cup final. The three tail-coated tenors, backed by more than 200 musicians, were watched by 800m people on television. The emotional climax was "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's "Turandot", culminating in a triumphant high B that cemented Pavarotti's fame worldwide.
After the first Three Tenors concert, Pavarotti increasingly performed for stadium-size audiences and collaborated with pop artists including Elton John and Celine Dion, usually for charity. Detractors accused him of sloth and selling out. A former manager wrote in a biography that he performed in "tinselly pop concerts in which he mouths his way through songs he has no idea how to sing".
His legacy helped pave the way for a new generation of classical performers who use social media to build genre-straddling careers.
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