Operatic Legend Luciano Pavarotti dies at 71

IT WAS operatic legend Luciano Pavarotti's wish to die at home. And he did, yesterday, with family close by at his villa near the Italian city of Modena after a battle with cancer.

The 71-year-old hailed by many as the greatest tenor of his generation was said to be calm about his impending death.

"The maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer, which eventually took his life," his manager Terri Robson said. "In fitting with the approach that characterised his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness."

The rotund, black-bearded tenor's greatest gift to the music world was perhaps when he joined Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras at the 1990 soccer World Cup and introduced operatic classics to about 800 million people around the globe.

But he was earlier known in the opera world as the singer who hit nine high Cs in a row in Daughter of the Regiment at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1972.

Police established a cordon outside Pavarotti's villa yesterday to keep in line those who had already gathered to pay respects. Condolences came too from those who had performed with him since he shot to fame with a stand-in appearance at London's Covent Garden in 1963.

Dame Joan Sutherland, whose artistic partnership with Pavarotti began more than 40 years ago, said there was "no question" his voice was one of the best. "It was incredible to stand next to it and sing along with it," Sutherland said.

The head of the Vienna State Opera, Ioan Holender, said the world had lost "the most beautiful tenor voice of my time".

Pavarotti's success also attracted the attention of the society columns. He left his wife Adua in 1996 after 35 years of marriage and three grown daughters for his secretary Nicoletta Mantovani, whom he married in 2003, and with whom he has a child, Alice, now four.