Luciano Pavarotti was born in Modena in 1935, but he had his first taste of success far from Italy — specifically in Llangollen, a picturesque village in the west of Wales that still has an active steam train line. Pavarotti traveled to the village in July 1955 to participate in the Eisteddfod Men’s Choir Competition. He was 19 at the time and a member of the Società Corale Gioachino Rossini of Modena, an amateur choir made up of workers from a car factory, office workers, students and his father, Fernando, a baker and also an amateur tenor. “Dad, it’s impossible to sing better than we have,” he told Fernando after performing Jacobus Handl’s In Nomine Jesu that earned them a gold medal. It was so hot in the marquee where the final was held that, when the jury’s decision was announced, the choir’s conductor fainted on stage.
Back in Italy, Pavarotti abandoned his teacher training course and began the musical career that would turn him into one of the most famous tenors of the 20th century. He signed up for singing lessons with Arrigo Pola and, in the 1960s, his Rodolfo de La bohème thrilled the public in London’s Covent Garden, Milan’s La Scala (conducted by Herbert von Karajan) and the Met in New York. When journalists asked him about the most decisive moment of his career, he would recall that competition in Wales: “I always say that to the journalists when they ask me what is a day more memorable in my life, and I always say that it is when I won this competition.”
His long-awaited return to Llangollen finally took place in 1995, four decades later, accompanied by the Rossini Choir with his 83-year-old father in the front row and the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Leone Magiera. TV cameras and 4,500 spectators were gathered to see him in the Eisteddfod Pavilion.
Pavarotti would have turned 90 on October 12, and to celebrate the anniversary, the Decca label has recovered the original recording of that memorable comeback performance in 1995. “It all came about as a result of a conversation between a producer from the network and a consultant from the record label,” says Amy Greer, responsible for the label’s classical catalog. “We thought that the remastering of the concert, which was not reissued or commercially released, provided great symbolic value.”
The Lost Concert — which was released today — includes arias, choruses and overtures from operas by Verdi and Puccini, among others, Neapolitan songs (such as O sole mio), Benvenuti’s Ave Maria, dolce Maria with lyrics by Pavarotti himself, as well as the tenor’s first known recordings as a member of the Corale Rossini during the 1955 competition: Orlando di Lasso’s Renaissance works Bonjour mon cœur and Handl’s In nomine Jesu.
It was common for local families in the village to offer free accommodation to choirs from all corners of Europe. Pavarotti and his father, who did not speak a single word of English and did not know that there was a Welsh language, stayed at Alice Griffiths’ house. “I went to see them sing at Llangollen,” she told reporters. “They had wonderful voices, but I never thought that young man would become so famous.”
Curiously, guest artists at the Eisteddfod competition included the soprano Joan Sutherland, who shortly after would become an inseparable ally of Pavarotti in the bel canto opera style, and the baritone Tito Gobbi, another of his references. “It is clear that what he saw and heard encouraged him to follow in their footsteps,” Greer points out.
“Luciano often told me about that first trip to Wales,” recalls Nicoletta Mantovani, Pavarotti’s wife and the mother of the youngest of Pavarotti’s four daughters. “It was an unforgettable and formative experience: he had never left post-war Italy and, suddenly, he found himself in an international competition, with different food, habits and another language… Everything seemed new and fascinating to him.” When the choir arrived back in Modena, there was a parade in their honor.
“He told me that if a small choir from a provincial town could win a world competition, maybe he could also make a career of it,” says Mantovani, adding that his family supported him from the get-go. “Luciano deeply admired his father,” she says. “They had a lot of fun in the rehearsals of the Corale Rossini. Fernando had an incredible voice, but not the courage to sing alone. He once jokingly said to his son, ‘Can you imagine the career you would have had with my voice?’”
Since the singer’s death in 2007 from pancreatic cancer, Mantovani has managed his legacy and overseen the running of the Modena House Museum, which receives more than 50,000 visitors a year. “Luciano’s mission was to bring opera to the whole world, that’s why he took the music out of concert halls and performed in stadiums, squares and parks with pop stars,” says Mantovani. “He never ignored upcoming generations: he taught for free, he wanted to give back the help he had received, and he gave young people opportunities. He always said that the decisive moment comes outside the classroom, when they have to face the public.”
Mantovani insists that Pavarotti would have wanted to celebrate what would have been his 90th birthday “with another of his great surprise parties,” such as the masked ball designed by Umberto Tirelli that she organized for his 70th. “He almost had a heart attack seeing so many friends together,” she says.
Pavarotti’s return to Wales in 1995 was not without complications. “Tibor Rudas [his manager at the time] had to be convinced, and he inspected the facilities before approving the visit,” Greer explains.
By then Pavarotti was already a star: besides having conquered the world’s operatic temples, from San Francisco to the Paris Opera, he had also performed to a massive crowd in Hyde Park, was one of the Three Tenors who emerged from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and had appeared with Gloria Estefan, Mariah Carey, B. B. King, Sting and Bono.
“Who would have guessed then that Nessun dorma would reach number two on the pop charts and sell hundreds of thousands of copies? Nothing like this had happened before and has not happened again,” says Greer. “It was the moment when Pavarotti transcended opera and brought classical music to the general public.”
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