Atque In Perpetuum, Luciano

[Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 5:44 PM Eastern on 6 Sep. See below.]

Luciano Pavarotti, perhaps the greatest tenor voice of the last half of the last century, and among the greatest tenor voices in all of history, is dead of pancreatic cancer at age 71. He died early this morning at his home in Modena, Italy.

Atque in perpetuum, Luciano. Ave atque vale.

A splendid obituary by Bernard Holland of The New York Times may be read here.

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Update (3:17 PM Eastern on 6 Sep): The New York Times chief music critic, Anthony Tommasini, we're pleased to say for a change, has written a first-rate piece: an assessment of Pavarotti's extraordinary vocal gifts, and of his genuinely stellar presence in the world of opera.

In the old days of the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts, a popular feature on the "Texaco Opera Quiz," as the intermission show used to be called, involved playing recordings of several artists singing the same well-known aria and asking the panelists to identify the singers. It was surprising how often even opera experts would confuse one great artist with another.

But no one ever mistook the voice of Luciano Pavarotti. There was the warm, enveloping sound: a classic Italian tenor voice, yes, but touched with a bit of husky baritonal darkness, which made Mr. Pavarotti’s flights into his gleaming upper range seem all the more miraculous.

And it wasn’t just the sound that was so recognizable. In Mr. Pavarotti’s artistry, language and voice were one. He had an idiomatic way of binding the rounded vowels and sputtering consonants of his native Italian to the tones and colorings of his voice. This practice is central to the Italian vocal heritage, and Mr. Pavarotti was one of its exemplars.

RTWT here.

Update 2 (5:44 PM Eastern on 6 Sep): And then there's this bit of (on-target) poetry from Alex Ross:

The finest singers not only hit the notes but erase the difference between notes and words. Singing is most thrilling when it becomes a kind of heightened talking. That’s what happens in Pavarotti's “Che gelida manina” or “E lucevan le stelle” or "Una furtiva lagrima": the beauty of the sound envelops you, but you’re not conscious of the artifice of art. It’s as if someone were making conversation in a dialect of dreams.

RTWT here.