...
My favorite aria by my favorite singer. I remember him filling my grandmother's apartment in San Francisco. She'd clutch her sternum and lift her ear at moments while getting us lunch or pouring a drink or looking for her cigarettes. I remember my romance with Groucho Veneziano, the restauranteur, realizing he snored with an Italian accent, while Pavarotti's greatest hits wafted up from the speakers in the dining room below our splendid bed. I remember the performance at Lincoln Center where he did seventeen encores, where everyone in the audience looked precisely as though they were having sex with him... and, indeed, I was gasping with transport at home in front of the TV... which thankfully had fantastic stereo speakers....
I hate that most of the world only knows him from after he lost his voice. I know, I know, anyone should be so lucky as to "lose" their voice like that, but he most assuredly had lost his voice by 1990. He hadn't lost our love. He should never lose that. But I have tried on just about every fantastic tenor there has been going over the last century. I have even heard Caruso... though, I can't really judge by such an old and bad quality recording... but with the possible exception of Caruso, Luciano was the greatest tenor in recorded history.
So turn this sucker up to eleven and if it has not made a tear leap to your eye, you have no soul.
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