Pavarotti

August 3, 1992
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.

October 2, 1995
Miami Beach officials reroute air traffic to keep noise from interfering with a Pavarotti outdoor concert; in London, the Prince and Princess of Wales, John Major and scores of others endure a downpour without umbrellas (which are kept furled so as not to block anybody's view of the stage) at a Pavarotti park performance. That's his world. Yet the tenor, again writing with Wright, his coauthor on Pavarotti: My Story, attempts in these pages to project the image of a simple man who disdains being set apart. And he pulls it off. He further disarms us by not dodging the scandals of recent years: his lip-synching rock concert; being booed at La Scala. The book lets us catch up on Pavarotti's doings of the last 15 years, for example, the international vocal competition he holds in Philadelphia, the horse show he inaugurated in Italy, his tours, family, health. An unexpected mean streak surfaces on occasion when Pavarotti relates embarrassing episodes concerning friends who have displeased him. If much of what is covered here is of little moment, readers will find that Pavarotti's exuberance more than compensates for the banal stretches. Photos not seen by PW.