The maestro who was conducting Luciano Pavarotti at the opening ceremony of the Turin Winter Olympic Games in 2006 has revealed that the ailing tenor lip-synched his performance. The late singer’s manager said on Monday that the bitter cold of the outdoor event made a live performance impossible.
Leone Magiera, who worked with Pavarotti for years, said in a recently published book that the rousing rendition of Nessun Dorma (Let No One Sleep) was prerecorded before the ceremony because “it would have been too dangerous for him to give a live performance in that physical condition.”
Magiera said the tenor was already suffering from sharp pains months ahead of a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in summer 2006 and using a wheelchair. Pavarotti died last September. He was 71.
“The orchestra pretended to play for the public there, I pretended to conduct and Luciano pretended to sing,” Magiera writes in Pavarotti Visto Da Vicino (Pavarotti Seen From Close Up) which was published last month.
“It came off beautifully, no one was aware of the technical tricks,” he wrote.
Magiera writes that what the audience heard that night in Turin had been recorded by Pavarotti in a studio in his hometown of Modena a few days before the appearance in the Piedmont capital which hosted the Winter Games.
The orchestra had prerecorded its part separately.
“His voice was nearly intact,” Magiera recalls in the book, published by Ricordi. “He found the strength to repeat it until he was completely satisfied. Then, he fell back on his wheelchair and closed his eyes, exhausted.”
Magiera didn’t elaborate on why Pavarotti was using a wheelchair.
Pavarotti’s former manager, Terri Robson, said in an e-mailed statement that the decision to do the lip-synching was made because of the bitter cold night air during the event.
The malignant pancreatic mass was discovered in summer 2006 as he was preparing to leave New York to resume a farewell tour, and Pavarotti underwent surgery in a New York hospital in early July.
All his remaining 2006 concerts were canceled.
Earlier that year, Pavarottti postponed five June dates because of what was described as complications from back surgery. He canceled eight concerts in April, saying he had been advised not to travel or perform while undergoing back treatment.
Robson said that tenor’s voice was “ in great shape ... but because of the extreme late-night temperature in Turin in February, for both him and the orchestra, it was decided that the only way to make it work was for him to pre-record.”
Pavarotti lip-synched a prerecorded performance in 1992 in Modena, drawing heavy criticism.
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