The people’s tenor

Scripps Howard: With his magnificent voice and commanding presence, Luciano Pavarotti was indisputably a great opera singer, along with Enrico Caruso perhaps the greatest tenor of the 20th century.

But what endeared him to millions is that he liberated opera from the rarefied and refined precincts to which it was increasingly confined and rendered its greatest works in lusty and earthy performances that in their own way may have been truer to their Italian-influence origins.

To the horror of purists, his Three Tenors performances with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras -- imagine, opera singers enjoying themselves onstage -- were chart-busters and earned them millions.

Costly fame

His fame was not cost-free. He walked out on his wife of 35 years to take up with his much younger secretary. He fought very public battles with his weight. He was involved in an embarrassing tax scandal. And, sadly, toward the end of his career, it was clear his voice was deserting him.

But Pavarotti rose to the occasion one final time, at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. Fittingly, it was the aria he was most identified with, the haunting and soaring “Nessun Dorma.” That summer he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Italian to the core, Pavarotti lived and died in Modena, the town of his birth.