Three years after the 63-year-old tenor caused an uproar in the Italian press for trading Adua, whom he had married in 1961, for the onetime natural-sciences student, Pavarotti stands stronger, literally, with Mantovani, 29, at his side. She makes sure he sticks to the daily regimen of swimming, weight training and walking prescribed by therapists after the tenor had his right hip replaced last July (minor surgery was later performed on the left knee as well). "The doctor said, 'Let's wait three months before you work,' " says Pavarotti, who returned to the stage Oct. 17 with a concert in Cologne, Germany.
Mantovani (no relation to the famous mood-music maestro of the '50s and '60s) has also kept him on a low-fat diet that has helped him shed more than 50 of his 300-plus pounds. "He had let himself go," says friend Cesare Clò, who manages Europa '92, a restaurant Pavarotti owns in his hometown, Modena, in northeastern Italy. These days if he wants to overindulge, "Nicoletta takes his plate away," says Clò. "And he lets her. 'I know you're doing it for my own good, amore,' he tells her." Says Pavarotti: "If you are not healthy, you are not a good singer."
And as the world knows well, Pavarotti has been more than good for the past three decades, a superstar whose hundreds of recordings and international appearances have made him the best-known opera star of all time, eclipsing even Caruso. The 30th anniversary of one early high point—his Nov. 23, 1968, debut with New York City's Metropolitan Opera in La Bohème—was to be celebrated with a gala performance this Nov. 22 at Lincoln Center.
And Pavarotti is as comfortable with pop as with Puccini. Last June his annual charity concert in Modena included Celine Dion, with whom he sang "I Hate You Then I Love You," Jon Bon Jovi ("Let It Rain") and—mamma mia!—the Spice Girls ("Viva Forever"), along with Trisha Yearwood and Stevie Wonder (who visited him post-surgery). The show, benefiting children in the war-torn African nation of Liberia, was just released on CD and videodisc and is scheduled to air Dec. 2 on PBS. "I see friends of mine going home singing a song of Celine," says Pavarotti of the event, "and young people go home singing Pavarotti. That is a beautiful, fantastic combination."
But the harmony took a while in coming. His deteriorating right hip, first injured when he was a 12-year-old playing soccer and aggravated by his weight, made performing increasingly difficult in recent years. When he joined Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras in Paris last July for their Three Tenors concert (broadcast to more than 1 billion viewers), "the other two were coming out smiling," he says. "I was very much in pain."
There had even been rumbles that Pavarotti was past his prime. At a 1995 performance of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment at the Met, listeners gasped when his voice cracked on a high note. "But he is a superstar," says Ash Khandekar, editor of Opera Now magazine. "People will see him whether he is singing well or not." If he sings. From the early '80s on, Pavarotti canceled shows left and right. Because of illness, he dropped out of the live Feb. 25 Grammys telecast minutes before he was to sing "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's Turandot. (Aretha Franklin belted out the aria instead.)
But the biggest storm was Nicoletta. They met in 1993, when the Bologna-raised Mantovani joined his staff of eight as a temporary secretary to help organize his international tours. She had never been keen on opera ("I was just one of those young people who thought it was boring"), but she was fluent in four languages, a must for a staffer to a globe-hopping star. "I said, 'Let's take this experience,' " recalls Mantovani, who still managed to finish her natural-sciences doctorate at the University of Bologna. Hired for three months, "I stayed for another three," she says, "then another three."
Neither Pavarotti nor his "companion," as she calls herself, will say when the relationship turned amorous. ("We consider that our moment," she says.) But paparazzi in Italy spotted the couple smooching in Pesaro in 1995 and on Barbados in '96. "The press," says Pavarotti sadly, "turned things not so great." Mantovani took strength from her father, Gianni, 52, who works in the Bologna government's finance department, and her mother, Gianna, 50, a bank director. "They warned me that a lot of people would be against us," she says, "but that they would always be with me if I was happy." The relationship, she says, "was a big change for me and an enormous change for him, but we thought it was correct."
Adua disagreed. The mother of Luciano's three daughters (Lorenza, Cristina and Giuliana, all in their early 30s), she upbraided him in an open letter to newspapers. Pavarotti had always been pursued by the ladies, she wrote, but he had handled himself with discretion. This time, she went on, he may have reached "the point of no return."
It was ciao time indeed, and the Pavarottis separated in March of 1996. (Their divorce becomes final next summer.) "My marriage was ended before I met Nicoletta—not officially but in ourselves," Pavarotti says. But he admits that the fallout was painful. "My daughters probably feel betrayed," says Pavarotti, whose own parents, Adele, 84, and Fernando, 86, himself a gifted amateur tenor, still live in Modena. "But they understand." In fact, Lorenza and Giuliana showed up at his 63rd birthday party. "They adore their father," says Mantovani. "So do I."
Mantovani, says Clò, "is in love with his whole personality, the whole package. She does everything a perfect wife should." And then some—such as coproducing this year's charity concert. Still, both she and Pavarotti are vague about marriage. They've discussed starting a family. "But it would be difficult to travel," says Mantovani. "I don't want to leave him alone, so I would like him to reduce work a bit."
That doesn't seem likely anytime soon. In 1999 he plans a string of solo recitals, as well as further Three Tenors concerts in Pretoria, South Africa, and Tokyo. "There are people who stop too soon, and there are those who go on too much," says Pavarotti. "It is difficult to say you will stop at the right time. I am pretty good, still in great shape." For now, he says, "I have two things which command me—Nicoletta and my throat. I am a happy prisoner of both of them."
Tom Gliatto
Simon Perry in Pesaro and Sarah Delaney in Rome
- Contributors:
- Simon Perry,
- Sarah Delaney.
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