I could listen to them for days armed with a bit of food and coffee.
Why does it seem Pavarotti is more revered then the other tenors?
I think because Pavarotti was the one with the big personality and the big publicity agent. Pavarotti was EVERYWHERE in the mid-80s up until around the early 90s. He was probably the only opera singer most people could name (and probably still is, actually). He even starred in a movie, Yes, Giorgio.
ETA: And yes, even though Sesame Street had a character, Placido Flamingo, Pavarotti was STILL way higher in public recognition than Domingo.
I never understood it. Domingo could sing circles around him and wasn’t constantly staring at the cue cards so he could connect with the audience better. Pavarotti was a Bel Canto pop star. His singing was pretty but soulless.
And even as Pavarotti is better known than Domingo, how’d you like to be “the other guy”? Whatshisname? Joe Carriers? Never heard of 'im!
Pav dabbled with mainstream music, too (Passangers) and seemed more the ‘celebrity’ than the other two. Carreras had that bout with leukemia, so that would have removed him from the spotlight some. Domingo was, just… there.
Will never forget the Italia '90 World Cup performance… <3
I’m no expert, but I think Carreras has the most interesting voice of the three --not as loud, but better able to get into the meaning of the words he is singing.
I disagree. The two are different types of singers, with very different voices, but Pavarotti could project emotion just as well as Domingo (not that he always did, but he could).
Also, Pavarotti kept his chops longer than the other two, which I think is the reason he was better known over the long run.
Roddy
Sorry, but the way he ALWAYS stared at the cue cards took me right out of it. Luciano, but this is probably the 10,000th time you sang “’O sole mio.” Don’t you think you should know the words by now?
Or was he losing his memory the last ten years of his life?
José Carreras.
His carreer was greatly affected by his leukemia; nowadays he spends a lot of time with a foundation dedicated to increasing and managing bone-marrow donations and to leukemia research.
Sorry…didn’t mean to whoosh you there. I do know what his name is, but I was basically posting the way the average American would…who is this guy? Compared to Domingo and definitely compared to Pavarotti, Carreras was the least-known of the Three Tenors.
So in your opinion the average American who can spell Pavarotti and doesn’t confuse that name with a brand of pasta (not to be confused with the average American) can’t be arsed use google?
I would have linked the Carreras foundation anyway, since I don’t expect foreigners to have heard of it unless they’re seriously interested either in leukemia or in Carreras’ work.
All I’m saying is that we’re talking about the relative “celebrity quotient” of the Three Tenors, and that Pavarotti is probably the best-known because of his efforts to remain in the mainstream spotlight for more than two decades, with Domingo a good distance behind and Carreras well behind them. I can almost guarantee you that if you mention “the Three Tenors” to a random American on the street, most of those asked probably would be able to pull out Pavarotti’s name (not necessarily the spelling, which wasn’t even the issue), a less than half would be able to name Domingo, and an even smaller minority would know Carreras. It has nothing to do with any of the three singers’ relative talents or philanthropic work. It has everything to do with the relative fame of each (in the US, which I assume is our baseline for this thread).
Pavarotti and Domingo both made their (meaningful) debuts in 1961. Domingo is still singing. Domingo’s voice has naturally lost some flexibility, ring and range as he’s aged, but he’s still at the top of the industry. Pavarotti’s voice was getting noticeably ragged through his later years (probably from trying to tackle inappropriate repertoire).
To my admittedly limited knowledge of opera, I always thought while Domingo was more versatile and could sing more roles, Pavarotti was better in the bel canto style…the pretty song. Bill James has written over the years that a baseball player who is very good in one or two areas will get more publicity than one who is not as spectacular in these areas but is pretty good in a whole lot more facets.
This may not mean anything but wasn't Pavarotti just a more striking figure visually than Domingo or Carreras...the beard, the white shirt and black tux, the black hair, a bit fat like we expect opera singers to be? Coupled with he and his management teams ability to get "Time" magazine covers, a "60 minutes" profile in the early 1980s, the only opera singer ever on SNL, various guest appearances by pop singers.
Pavarotti's wiki biography says he received a record 17 curtain calls from a NY Metopera audience in 1972. Not sure how much that means but it means somethingYes, Pavarotti was a lyric tenor, which tends to have more popular appeal than the dramatic tenor roles that Domingo generally sings.
And all I’m saying is that there’s better ways to do that than one which starts by implying that the speaker doesn’t recognize the name José, which is one commonly used in American English.
I’m done with this, because I don’t even know where this whole argument CAME from. Jose may be a commonly used name in the areas of America that YOU lived in, but in probably most of the center of the country it’s major usage in the phrase “No way, Jose!” The whole thing is way off topic of the OP, though. I was posting “in the voice” of a typical midwesterner from small town America. The fact is that Carreras is nowhere near as well known as even Domingo, let alone Pavarotti, and this sideline fight doesn’t change any part of that, regardless of which one of our opinions of small-town America is true.
Dude. Referring to Carreras as “… and the other guy” was a Seinfeld gag! And a funny one at that.