Pavarotti

MODENA, Italy (Reuters):

Legendary Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whose titanic voice and charisma brought opera to the masses, died of cancer yesterday, aged 71.

"There were tenors, and then there was Pavarotti," said Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli.

His health had been failing for a year, but the death of the bearded tenor, known as 'Big Luciano' because of his 127 kg (280 lb) bulk, saddened everyone from impresarios and critics,to fans who could barely afford tickets.

Opera for the people

While past opera greats often locked themselves in a gilded, elitist world, television viewers around the world heard Pavarotti sing with pop stars like Sting and Bono in his 'Pavarotti and Friends' benefit concerts.

"Some can sing opera; Luciano Pavarotti was an opera," Bono said on his website. "I spoke to him last week ... the voice that was louder than any rock band was a whisper."

London's Royal Opera House at Covent Garden said: "He introduced the extraordinary power of opera to people who perhaps would never have encountered opera and classical singing. In doing so, he enriched their lives. That will be his legacy." Vienna's Staatsoper flew a black flag.

Pavarotti leapt to superstardom when he and two other great tenors, Placido Domingo and José Carreras, sang at Rome's Caracalla Baths during the 1990 soccer World Cup in Italy.

Sales of opera albums shot up after the concert. The aria Nessun Dorma from Puccini's Turandot, which has the famous line "at dawn I will be victorious", became as familiar to soccer fans as the usual stadium chants. At the changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London, the band played Nessun Dorma.

"He was without doubt one of the most important tenors of all time," Carreras told the Swedish newspaper Expressen. "He was a wonderful man, a charismatic person - and a good poker player."

Attached to his hometown

United States President George W. Bush called him a "great humanitarian" who used his great talent to help the needy.

Pavarotti's father was a baker who liked to sing and his mother worked in a cigar factory. The people of Modena, a town in north-east Italy, mourned a man who remained attached to his hometown, even as a superstar.

Venusta Nascetti, a 71-year-old who used to serve Pavarotti coffee in a local bar when he was a teenager, remembered him as being "full of joy, he had a happy spirit".

"He always loved us just like we loved him," the frail woman told reporters outside Pavarotti's house.

His body will lie in state in Modena cathedral from late Thursday until a funeral tomorrow at 3:00 p.m.

Big break

Pavarotti's big break came thanks to another Italian opera great, Giuseppe di Stefano, who dropped out of a performance of La Boheme at Covent Garden in 1963. The house had lined up "this large young man" as a stand-in - and a star was born.

In 1972 he famously hit nine high C's in a row in Daughter of the Regiment at New York's Metropolitan Opera, which he referred to as "my home". The Met's director James Levine said Pavarotti's singing "spoke right to the hearts of listeners, whether they knew anything about opera or not".

His last public performance was at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Turin in February 2006.