MODENA, Italy (Reuters) - Legendary Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whose titanic voice and charisma brought opera to the masses, died of cancer on Thursday aged 71.
"There were tenors, and then there was Pavarotti," said Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli.
His health had been failing for a year, but the death of the bearded tenor, known as "Big Luciano" because of his 280 lb bulk, saddened everyone from impresarios and critics to fans who could barely afford tickets.
While past opera greats often locked themselves in a gilded, elitist world, television viewers around the world heard Pavarotti sing with pop stars like Sting and Bono in his "Pavarotti and Friends" benefit concerts.
"Some can sing opera; Luciano Pavarotti WAS an opera," Bono said on his Web site. "I spoke to him last week ... the voice that was louder than any rock band was a whisper."
London's Royal Opera House at Covent Garden said: "He introduced the extraordinary power of opera to people who perhaps would never have encountered opera and classical singing. In doing so, he enriched their lives. That will be his legacy." Vienna's Staatsoper flew a black flag.
Pavarotti leapt to superstardom when he and two other great tenors, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, sang at Rome's Caracalla Baths during the 1990 soccer World Cup in Italy.
Sales of opera albums shot up after the concert. The aria "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's "Turandot," which has the famous line "At dawn I will be victorious," became as familiar to soccer fans as the usual stadium chants.
"He was without doubt one of the most important tenors of all time," Carreras told the Swedish newspaper Expressen. "He was a wonderful man, a charismatic person -- and a good poker player."
At the changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London, the band played Nessun Dorma.
U.S. President George W. Bush called him a "great humanitarian" who used his great talent to help the needy.
A "HAPPY SPIRIT"
Pavarotti's father was a baker who liked to sing and his mother worked in a cigar factory. The people of Modena, a town in northeast Italy, mourned a man who remained attached to his hometown even as a superstar.
Venusta Nascetti, a 71-year-old who used to serve Pavarotti coffee in a local bar when he was a teenager, remembered him as being "full of joy, he had a happy spirit."
"He always loved us just like we loved him," the frail woman told reporters outside Pavarotti's house.
His body will lie in state in Modena cathedral from late Thursday until a funeral on Saturday at 3 p.m.
Pavarotti's big break came thanks to another Italian opera great, Giuseppe di Stefano, who dropped out of a performance of "La Boheme" at Covent Garden in 1963. The house had lined up "this large young man" as a stand-in -- and a star was born.
In 1972 he famously hit nine high C's in a row in "Daughter of the Regiment" at New York's Metropolitan Opera, which he referred to as "my home."
The Met's director James Levine said Pavarotti's singing "spoke right to the hearts of listeners whether they knew anything about opera or not."
His last public performance was at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Turin in February 2006.
FINAL ACT
Pavarotti had surgery in New York for pancreatic cancer in July last year, then retreated to his villa in Modena.
Pavarotti received two more weeks' treatment in hospital in Modena last month, and went home on August 25. He spent his final hours at home with family and friends nearby, his manager Terri Robson said, adding:
"He remained optimistic and confident that he would overcome the disease and had been determined to return to the stage to complete his Worldwide Farewell Tour."
Robson said that until just weeks before his death, Pavarotti devoted several hours a day to teaching pupils at his summer villa in Pesaro, on Italy's Adriatic Coast. Pavarotti opened an academy for young singers in Modena two years ago.
Although Pavarotti began singing in a church choir aged nine, his passion was soccer and he wanted to turn professional.
His mother persuaded him to be a teacher, a job he did for two years until he realized his true vocation.
In 2003, Pavarotti married Nicoletta Mantovani, an assistant 34 years his junior and younger than his three daughters, after an acrimonious divorce from Adua, his wife of 37 years.
As Nicoletta was bearing twins, the pregnancy ran into complications and their son Riccardo was stillborn. Their surviving daughter Alice is now four years old.
(Additional reporting by Silvia Aloisi, Philip Pullella, Stephen Brown and Phil Stewart in Italy, Jeremy Lovell and Paul Majendie in London and Claudia Parsons in New York) _________________ kyranŠ
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