Celebrating a star – and an era, and an art form
A colleague and I were playing that old parlour game the other day: who is the most famous person you’ve ever met? Given our jobs, we’re both privileged to regularly meet some of the most high-profile classical artists today – and yet even the greatest of those are still likely to be trumped by, say, a pop star, or an actor, or royalty. And yet if you’d ever met Pavarotti, then he, most likely, would have given you the winning card. The tenor was, quite simply, one of the world’s most famous people. That a classical artist achieved such fame in today’s world is extraordinary. It didn’t happen that often before either (Jenny Lind, Enrico Caruso and Maria Callas are potential exceptions), and for all the prominence of the likes…
