EL PAÍS (Sunday, 2 September 1990)
At 22.25 yesterday, the aerostatic bulk of Luciano Pavarotti drew in air (aria) and released it on the notes of Quanto è bella, quanto è cara, and the ceremony of ecstasy began for the thousands of people who almost filled Madrid’s Palacio de Deportes. The great tenor was accompanied by the city’s symphony orchestra, conducted by Leone Magiera. Among those present: foreign minister Francisco Fernández Ordóñez and Madrid mayor Agustín Rodríguez Sahagún.
What rapture, what rolling eyes when Pavarotti attacked Una furtiva lagrima / negli occhi suoi spuntò. Then came Verdi, Massenet, Puccini, Bizet, and popular songs, always in a triumphal mood. He is an extreme big man, as likely to work the showy foulard in airports and press conferences as to brandish a handkerchief mid-performance to wipe his sweat. And the public gives itself over unconditionally, because Pavarotti is a planet whose gravitational mass always draws thousands of admirers and also millions of pesetas, and that attraction is fatal and contagious.
Madrid’s public had paid between 2,500 and 25,000 pesetas to bathe in Pavarotti, and it did not matter that the divo sang with a microphone, which distorted his voice and did little for the orchestra’s acoustics.
Better on record
“The truth is you hear him better on record, but the good thing is seeing him here” was the reasoning most often heard. And it is true that Pavarotti, more than being seen, is sighted at a distance. Criticism of the acoustics of Madrid’s Palacio de Deportes has always proliferated, whether for rock concerts or for a bel canto night like last night’s.
The colossus has sold 350,000 copies of Tutto Pavarotti, launched with a highly effective television campaign, and it has become an inevitable gift record.
Luciano Pavarotti, besides a formidable voice, is what is now called a communicator: that is, he sells.
He did not disappoint his unconditional public in the arias (so well known that even little Vanessa already hums them) or in the songs, because Pavarotti comes out to sweat the shirt and the tails, and leaves the little handkerchief in rags from furtive torrents of sweat. Who would not value that.
The Italian tenor will give two recitals in Spain. After last night in Madrid, he sings in Barcelona at the Olympic Stadium on Friday the 8th.
The extraordinary anticipation around the tenor’s concerts grew after the popular success of the concert with Plácido Domingo and José Carreras in Rome during the last football World Cup, a concert broadcast on television to the whole world.