Luciano Pavarotti, one of the world’s greatest singers, died last Thursday. It was not my fault. Pancreatic cancer was the culprit. The only thing I’m guilty of is ignoring his music since that crucial day back in high school when I realized together with a friend that we didn’t have to listen to pop and at that specific period, hip-hop, to be cool.
Since then, my aural taste has been retrospective, getting kicks out of the fun and funky 80’s new wave and digging deeper and deeper each time into the archives of rhythm and melodies until I ran into Frank Sinatra’s sleek and suave vocal performance, and of course, the immortal classical music.
So while my classmates were wearing shirts bigger than their juvenile imaginings, and putting on their pants way, way below their NSAT scores, I always have had the irrepressible urge to tuck in my shirt, wear well-ironed slacks, slip on shiny formal shoes, and swing away into college.
All this time, Pavarotti had been dishing out his type of music closer and closer to the general public, and was quite successful at such endeavor. We could have had met somewhere in between my Beatles and Mozart phase. But I never really got into liking the opera, until I started listening to Josh Groban and upgrading to Andrea Bocelli maybe just because I was in Italy for a year and was able to understand a word or two of the lyrics to his songs.
A year or so, and perhaps, I could have reached a point in my musical odyssey where Pavarotti already inaugurates my Sunday mornings. But then again the man has left the stage. Wait, his music remains, therefore, there is hope.
The elements of the universe must have conspired pretty well because a day after Pavarotti’s death, during which I was in serious assessment of my audio inclinations, I got two tickets to a concert featuring opera, Broadway and Kundiman music.
The performance, in fact, started with an “Our Father” tribute to Pavarotti by baritone Noel Azcona. While Mr. Azcona holds a very compact resume – which includes being a member of the UST Singers and accustomed to critical acclaims and standing ovations – he admitted he was not in top form that night due to a recent cold that explains the sporadic cough intervals.
Nenen Espina, a NAMCYA-winning soprano, shared the stage with him in a string of duets and belted out arguably the concert’s unforgettable solos, a validation of the rave reviews she had received for her portrayals of operatic roles, among them, as Suzuki in Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” side by side with world-renowned soprano Yoko Watanabe.
The programme -- which saw fresh interpretations of Handel’s Ombra Mai Fu (from Xerxes) to Loewe’s I Could Have Danced All Night (from My Fair Lady) and Umali’s Ang Pag-ibig Mo – was accompanied by pianist Mary Anne Espina. Ms. Espina has been collaborating with various artists including team-ups with renowned Filipino pianist Nena del Rosario-Villanueva, French violinist Frederic Pellasy and many others. Her most recent collaboration was with Filipino cellist Victor Michael Coo.
The concert was part of Music, News & Features’ 2007 Great Performance Series, and was organized for the benefit of the Negros Cultural Foundation, Inc.
It was a night of fine, elegant music made reachable and relevant to an eclectic audience of patrons, sponsors, young people like me, and yes, even seminarians. Brief yet solid, which might not be sufficient to describe Pavarotti’s life and achievements, but the performances of the young artists were so.
A baritone, a soprano and a pianist may not be enough to fill the whole Ballroom of the L’Fisher Hotel, no equal to the likes of Italian Premier Romano Prodi, U2 lead singer Bono, movie director Franco Zeffirelli and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan occupying the pews of Modena, Italy’s 12th-century Romanesque cathedral to give Pavarotti his final standing ovation.
But I clapped happy and refreshed, and a departed tenor would have had at least smiled.
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