Farewell, fat man.(Music)(Luciano Pavarotti)

HE was our Caruso, and now he's gone--or almost gone. In the first half of March, Luciano Pavarotti bade farewell to the Metropolitan Opera with three appearances in Tosca. He is scheduled to retire altogether sometime in 2005--on his 70th birthday, he has said, which will be in October of that year. Many people claim that he should have bowed out long before, but it was hard for him to go, and, frankly, it was hard for the public to let him go. Pavarotti was a performer. He was also a superb--a historically superb--tenor and musician.

His story is familiar to anyone who has poked around opera. Born in Modena, Italy. His father a baker, his mother a worker in a tobacco factory. Luciano shared a wet nurse with Mirella Freni (the famed soprano)--that is one of the great trivial facts in opera.

The baker father also happened to be a singer--an amateur one, and by all accounts a gifted one--and he passed this enthusiasm to his son. The son learned, quickly, under excellent teachers. He boasted one of the most extraordinary voices of the century: It was essentially a lyric voice--a bel canto voice--but it had power that came out of nowhere. He was both graceful and strong, a hart and a lion. His technique was astoundingly secure and capable. He was a master of Italian declamation, one of the last such exemplars around.

And his personality? Big and sunny and rich and happy as Italy (pardon the sentimentality).

He became a key part of the bel canto revival around the world, joining Joan Sutherland, her husband Richard Bonynge, and Marilyn Horne. For his feats in Donizetti's Fille du Regiment, he was dubbed "King of the High C's," a label that stuck. The king sold a lot of records. His company, Decca, is describing him as "the most beloved opera star in the history of the recording industry." They are not to be argued with.

Pavarotti was occasionally dismissed as a simpleton with a freak instrument. This was absurd. Pavarotti was a marvelous musician, though not a schooled one. He was a natural. Anyone can acquire the schooling; musicality is not for sale. It has always been said--whispered, snorted--that Pavarotti can't read music. I, for one, was always skeptical of this claim. First of all, millions of schoolchildren around the world can read music--it's no big deal. Second, how could Pavarotti function, in his career, without reading music? It's on the order of functioning in the literary world without being able to read words.

Not long ago, I had a chance to speak to someone close to Pavarotti, a colleague (who adores him). "Would you put a myth to rest for me?" I asked. "What about this ridiculous notion that Pavarotti can't read music?" "He can't," replied my source. "He really can't"--which, of course, makes Pavarotti's achievement all the more remarkable. He has a phenomenal memory, a phenomenal ability to absorb, repeat, intuit.