When a New York theater
advertises a supposed farewell performance by someone as legendary as Luciano Pavarotti, with seats sold-out months in advance and 3,000 fans waiting to watch a live telecast in the plaza outside, and then the star fails to appear, the management has to come up with something pretty wonderful to avoid a mass demand for ticket refunds, if not an actual riot.
This was the situation at the Metropolitan Opera on May 11, 2002. What the theater did was bring in the young Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra, esteemed by the critics but not due to make his Met debut for another two years. The opera was Puccini's Tosca, and Licitra scored a major success in what must have been the most difficult of conditions. The New York Times critic wrote of "an ecstatic standing ovation" and "the starry anointing of a potential successor [to Pavarotti]."
The new star's attraction, by all accounts, was unambiguously erotic, as it used to be a hundred ago when operatic tenors were the pop stars of their day.
"It was his athletic and ardent singing that won you over ... an exciting tenor with a big, dark-hued and muscular voice," and "viscerally powerful" top notes, the Times critic wrote.
Squeals of delight
Last week, in the offices of Taipei's New Aspect agency (responsible for bringing Salvatore Licitra to Taiwan) there were squeals of delight as the rumor went round during a phone interview that he had split up with his girlfriend. Yes, he was now single and unattached, the staff excitedly insisted.
Given this, the actual concert seems almost like a side-show. Tickets are NT$800 to NT$4,200 but are selling briskly nonetheless, despite a change of date since the original publicity was released. The concert will now definitely be this Sunday, at 8pm, following the matinee
performance of Falstaff on the same stage at 2.30pm. There will probably not be time for the opera set to be removed, but some sort of compromise will no doubt be arrived at.
Popular aria
The program is the usual sort of thing for celebrity appearances of this kind. There will be popular Italian arias (from Cavalleria Rusticana, Tosca, Un Ballo in Maschera and so on) plus overtures and orchestral interludes. The Taipei Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by Eugene Kohn, a veteran New York maestro who appeared in the 2002 film Callas Forever, re-creating his real-life role as piano accompanist to the most celebrated of all operatic sopranos.
This is Salvatore Licitra's second visit to Taiwan, and all tickets were sold for his Taipei appearance last year. For Pavarotti's successor-in-waiting what else would you expect? For the rest, Licitra revealed last week that he keeps fit, doing 200 push-ups a day, "to protect his voice," and that he likes Taiwan because of the variety of foods that are available and the "politeness" of the ladies.
As for Pavarotti, he'd only met him once, he said. This should have been the most astonishing of his revelations. As it was, what caused the biggest thrill at New Aspect was the news that he really likes Asian girls, and the management's confirmation that he would be staying in Taipei for four days, despite having only the one concert. (The reality is that he's on an Asian tour, and so will simply be waiting for his next engagement). Representatives of the agency, however, were reluctant to reveal which hotel he would be staying in.
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