PAVAROTTI: Blu-ray (CBS, Hanway, Imagine Entertainment, 2019) Lionsgate

One of the most preeminent pop stars to achieve international rock-star status in the 1980’s hailed not from the boozin’, ballin and Benzedrine-driven underworld of rock and roll, but from the cultured sphere of opera – usually made exclusive to those from the well-pedigreed and even more well-heeled jet set. With his oddly divine cherub-esque grin, bulbous frame and chronically disheveled hairline, Luciano Pavarotti’s debut as a cultural phenomenon, as beloved as he was renown, with the oft double-edged notoriety to accompany his fame, seemed quite unlikely. This child of the Second World War, who struggled with a life-long passionate insecurity – believing every performance was his opportunity to ‘die’ before a live audience; his innate trust and investment in the goodness of humanity at large, married twice – a big no-no in the Catholic church – only to suffer prematurely from pancreatic cancer at the age of 70; Pavarotti today is, I think, even more well-known and as regarded as he was in his prime. For it is saying much of his legacy, that no less a film-maker than Ron Howard would strive to capture the essence of this man, who unabashedly gave everything to live a man’s life with no lingering regrets – save one – at the end of his life. Once asked how he would like to be remembered, Pavarotti reasoned, as someone who loved people, and who, in turn merely wanted people to love him back unconditionally. His second marriage to Nicoletta Mantovani, 34 years his junior would test the second half of this desire; especially in Pavarotti’s home town of Modena, whose populace was quick to condemn, believing his burgeoning romance a thorough perversion, disgrace and betrayal of all that was good and wholesome. But we are getting ahead of ourselves, and indeed, the point to Howard’s lovingly assembled tribute to the man – primal flaws and all.

Pavarotti – the movie (2019) is nothing less than a celebration of this life well-lived, and a story of success, righteously deserved. Culling together a vast assortment of archival snippets and sound bites, most of them from a video-logue kept by the great tenor’s family – and in deplorable VHS quality, alas – plus interview footage conducted by Michael Parkinson, Johnny Carson and Phil Donahue, among others, Pavarotti strives to tell the story of a great singer, a wonderful humanitarian, and a beloved husband and father, who may not have always hit the high notes in his private life, but nevertheless managed to see the bigger picture in life itself. And Luciano Pavarotti respected human life immensely. It is this connection, perhaps even above and beyond that golden – often piercing tenor voice – for which Luciano Pavarotti remains a household word today; arguably, the only artist whose congeniality and warmth could politely insist that a crowd of several thousand, including the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana, having gathered in the pouring rain to hear him perform for a benefit concert, extinguish their umbrellas and face pneumonia, merely out of the respect and for the pleasure of their fellow patrons. And Pavarotti was, in his prime, the eminence gris for opera’s place in modern pop culture – bridging the gap between the ‘important artistes’ from opera’s pantheon, and, the prevailing ‘stars’ who readily sold out concert venues within a few hours. No other tenor, save the great Enrico Caruso, has ever enjoyed such immensely unanticipated popularity in the 20^th century. Pavarotti, the movie, attempts to connect today’s audiences with the innate dignity and soulful regard that Pavarotti – the man – possessed at a glance; a congenial, in-touch compassion for his fellow man and artist.

Curiously, given the girth of Luciano Pavarotti’s musical accomplishments, Howard’s picture is light on performance. I get it. This isn’t an appreciation of Pavarotti’s concerts – per say (I can get that from listening to his many CD’s) – or even the powerhouse tenor voice that could reach beyond the back of a ‘sold out’ engagement at the Metropolitan, to burrow deep within our collective soul. But there is not a single aria here that is not frequently, and occasionally – interminably - interrupted by some surviving presenter, musician, friend or family member, whose recollections about the man are perceived as more worthy of our earshot and investment of our time than Pavarotti’s music. Personally, I think Pavarotti would have hated that. And Howard’s movie also omits Pavarotti’s big movie debut in the failed musical pastiche, Yes, Giorgio, that was supposed to do for this golden-voiced tenor in 1982 what MGM had done for Mario Lanza in 1949 – provide a great presence with an even greater and more lucrative film career. Despite its inability to achieve this, Yes, Giorgio gave Pavarotti his first pop hit, ‘If We Were In Love’ – a superb ballad written by John Williams that Pavarotti - the movie might have exploited as a transitional piece to mark the occasion when the tenor’s interests transcended the exclusivity of opera, and truly began to lean towards a more chart-topping focus on using his inbred charisma and already well-established iconography to become a true mensch and humanitarian. 

The latter half of Howard’s film lingers on that watershed 1990 concert, given by the three tenors in Caracalla Baths, Rome, in which Pavarotti – for the first of three times, appeared alongside Spanish sensation, José Carreras (then, newly recovered from a virulent bout of leukemia) and Plácido Domingo. The sheer joy of watching these three mesmeric artists exercising their craft, indulging in an impromptu and playful ‘challenge’ during ‘La Donna e Mobile’ or combining their earth-shattering vocals for a triumphant reprise of ‘Nessun Dorma’, while an ebullient, and thoroughly sweat-soaked Zubin Mehta conducts a symphony orchestra, assembled from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the orchestra of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, is a joy I distinctly recall watching as it unfolded to a packed audience on the eve before the FIFA World Cup Final. And the cast album that immediately followed it from Decca Classics not only won the Grammy for Best Classical Vocal Performance, but it also went on to become the biggest-selling classical album of all time.

Given Pavarotti’s formidable career, his meteoric rise from the unlikeliest of impoverished circumstances, and the many professional barriers torn down on route to his world-wide acclaim, perhaps the greatest revelation derived from Howard’s documentary is that his first wife, Adua Veroni and their three daughters - Lorenza, Giuliana and Christina - all remain reverent in their passion for their father’s life and work; although Christina does admit to a temporary falling out after news, exposing Pavarotti’s long-term affair with Nicoletta first broke, not only in the tabloids, but also their hearts. Pavarotti – the movie – attempts, at once to establish Pavarotti – the man – as a big, boisterous bon vivant trapped in an adult’s body; someone, with a wickedly boyish sense of humor who always took the work seriously, but never life itself. This, arguably, he appreciated on his own terms with an ardent humility for the opportunities he had been given, but viewed from the vantage it was a gift never to be squandered wallowing in self-pity or personal regrets.  There is, I think, a certain wisdom in that rather simplistic philosophy – to add on the mileage while never looking back in the rear view mirror of life. Pavarotti absolutely refused to listen to his old recordings, or watch his previous concert appearances, although, in 2006, badly ailing from the pancreatic cancer soon to claim his life, he did permit his daughters to smuggle in an early recording, which, upon an intent listening, he suddenly declared with startled pride, as ‘worthy’ of his talents.  

And who could really blame Luciano Pavarotti for his hesitations here. They had, after all, been good years – too good, in fact, to remember now with any modicum of sadness – the 1980’s, that seemingly impossible decade of excess, rife with possibilities for the ambitious and driven. This was the real golden age of Pavarotti – the artist – straddling that chasm between highborn culture and pop art, not above doing commercial endorsements for American Express that paid a pittance to his then agent, Herbert Breslin – one of the most tyrannical and universally despised men in the music industry. In more recent times, Breslin has taken to deconstructing this alliance with a scandalous ‘tell-all’ in which he compares Pavarotti’s ‘stupendous voice’ to the ‘magnificence’ of his weight and ego; suggesting the great tenor’s kind-hearted reputation was all just a front for a ‘childish, obsessive and over-demanding’ prima donna. But the story of a very beautiful soul transformed into a selfishly determined and somewhat unhappy superstar is, mercifully, not what we get in Pavarotti – the movie.  And while Breslin is undeniably responsible for streamlining Pavarotti’s opera career into a concert and stage-oriented powerhouse with mass appeal, his biographical account of their 36-year alliance seems to reek of vindictiveness for Pavarotti’s longevity and success without him. After all, how many people even know who Herbert Breslin is?   

Howard’s documentary, instead, invests its time wisely on the burgeoning years of Pavarotti’s opera career. Tripping lightly over his formative life – before music - in Modena, Italy, the only son of a baker with a ‘promising’ career as a footballer ahead of him, we jump ahead in the timeline to Luciano’s debut, singing in the chorus of his father’s choir, to have won the grand prize at the Llangollen International Singing Competition in Wales, and then, of course, to Pavarotti’s even greater mark in the opera world as Rodolfo in 1961’s landmark stage production of La Boheme. Yet, Pavarotti’s legendary status and international celebrity would not be confirmed until 1972’s production of Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment at the famed Metropolitan Opera House where Pavarotti managed to hit a staggering 9 high C’s, seemingly with no effort at all, that brought the usually stuffy New York critics to their feet in a spontaneous standing ovation. From here, Howard’s film performs a rather nondescript Triptiks through the really good years – catching glimpses of the great man rubbing elbows with the likes of President Jimmy Carter, Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra, Princess Diana, and U2’s Bono, who, at Pavarotti’s behest, and, perhaps, under duress, wrote an anthem for the war-displaced children of Sarajevo, later performed at a live charity concert.  

In later years, Pavarotti was heavily criticized for not knowing when to hang it up and retire gracefully to the life of a countrified gentleman, New York Times critic, Antoni Tommasini, famously declaring it ‘sad’ to hear Pavarotti ‘with such diminished energy’ that it took everything the old master had to ‘make his voice work’ so he ‘essentially left matters of rhythm and pacing to chance.’ Note to Mr. Tommasini, whom I would sincerely dare to even attempt the myriad of notes Pavarotti achieved even in his ‘diminished’ capacity. And Pavarotti’s friends, Placido Domingo, soprano, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Dame Joan Sutherland among them, have all spoken out in Pavarotti’s defense, as though any were required. What can best be surmised by Pavarotti – the movie, is that it challenges the notion good men achieve greatness by sacrificing personal integrity, and, at the expense of their scruples. That Pavarotti should have left his first wife of long-standing to marry another is, I believe, a decision he did not come to either lightly or without some consternation. And, that he remained dear in Adua’s heart longer than in her bed, is worthy of our rediscovery. While so many spouses split their bond in mutually shared acrimony and lingering contempt, Pavarotti seems to have found a more clear-eyed and circumspect logic in parting with Adua as friends. Indeed, in the last act of his life, both sides of the family banded together to wait out the inevitable and comfort one another after the thought-numbing loss and resplendent public funeral. This, perhaps, is Luciano Pavarotti’s greatest gift – the bond of an unlikely reunion – each side setting aside hurt feelings to honor the man they all called papa.

Pavarotti – the movie – arrives on Blu-ray via Lionsgate. Just to be clear – you are not watching this one for pristine image quality. Most of the clips assembled here are derived from video-based footage for which no up-conversion to hi-def is possible. Whenever possible, still images have been assembled from hi-resolution scans, and the new ‘interview’ footage reveals how far the technology has come since Pavarotti’s time. The TV-derived interviews are, frankly, a mess, with image stabilization applied, but color correction not to have been even an afterthought. Personally, I think this adds something to the dated period-look of the piece. The audio here has been preserved from the best possible surviving analog and digital sources. Mercifully, audio recording technologies were more advanced than video technologies. So, Pavarotti’s greatest performances are heard in all their stereophonic glory, uprezed to 5.1 DTS. Extras here include a retrospective featurette ‘Pavarotti and Friends’, reflections on the making of the documentary from Ron Howard, and, a trailer for another upcoming Lionsgate release. For those who were not around in the 1980’s, it was a decade of miracles in broadcast technology; moving from film to tape-based content, with mono sound giving way – in select instances – to stereo ‘where available’. From a purely pop culture-oriented standpoint, the eighties were the last decade to yield diversity in programming content; the big 3 networks, unencumbered by competition from cable networks, able to control what, when and how the public consumed its shows and/or special presentations. That no afterthought was ever given to the way this content would – or rather, could be viewed – decades into the future is, of course, the great tragedy; one, never to be rectified. Video-based content will never look great in 1080p. One should not even hope for it to happen. So, Pavarotti – the movie – represents these discrepancies between ‘then’ and ‘now’ with as much respectful care to maintain the integrity of their dead video formats. 

Aside: I sincerely miss the 1980’s. But I miss Luciano Pavarotti more. I am mindful of the good fortune to have lived long enough to have had the opportunity to experience this great talent in his prime. My fondest wish would have been that everyone viewing Ron Howard’s documentary had had such a luxury. They were good times, you see – very good times, indeed. And with the passage of the years and the inevitable losses incurred along the way, it is good to look back and remember what wonderful years those were. Happier times, to be sure. Strangely, more innocent too, or at least, seemingly, far less complicated. Bottom line: very highly recommended. If you loved Pavarotti as much as I did, also bring Kleenex. A few tears of joy are bound to be shed!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

3