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December 15, 2004
A Fight at the Opera
Herbert Breslin became master tenor Luciano Pavarotti's publicist in 1967 and ultimately dumped Placido Domingo from his client list so that he could become Pavarotti's manager. He lasted as Pavarotti's manager for 35 years.
However, now Mr. Breslin is Mr. Pavarotti's ex-manager, and he has written a book about Pavarotti that is the subject of this hilarious NY Times Book Review by Jane and Michael Stein. Here are a couple of delicious snippets:
As Pavarotti got bigger in every way, Breslin's adoration shrank. By the time of the Three Tenors, a pop phenomenon engineered not by Breslin but by the impresario Tibor Rudas, Breslin was miserable. "A big, big, big mistake" is how he describes Pavarotti's original deal to sing with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras for charity, lamenting that "Once, I had been Luciano's creator. . . . Now I had been reduced to his foil. My role was to act as a buffer and, most important, to get him more money." Finally he bemoans that "managing an artist can be like serving a life sentence in Alcatraz."
And what of Pavarotti's legendary appetite?:
Gluttony is a big theme in Breslin's demystification. "It's not just that he likes to eat," he snipes. "He loves to smell food, to touch food, to prepare food, to think about food, to talk about food. When he comes into a room, he begins sniffing like a dog, and his first question is, 'What smells so good?'" We are treated to scenes of him using a tablespoon to gobble up caviar to the point of nausea and of his "swaying belly flowing over the edge of the chaise longue."
Not only is Pavarotti a pig, but he has bad taste, and his house in Modena "looks like something on Queens Boulevard, crammed with trinkets, tchotchkes, anything and everything." When Pavarotti falls in love with the decor of his suite at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, he makes Breslin buy all the furniture, drapes and bedspread, and ship it to Modena. "It looks like a big blood clot," Breslin observes.
Read the entire review. What a hoot!
Posted by Tom at December 15, 2004 05:09 AM
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