"Pavarotti e La Boheme": a Book to Honor the Beloved Tenor

The book Pavarotti e la Bohème was donated yesterday to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Marilena Ferrari, founder and president of FMR (Franco Maria Ricci Publishing House) presented it together with Nicoletta Mantovani, Big Luciano's widow. 

On the same evening a perfornance of Verdi's Requiem was given at the Metropolitan Opera. The occasion was the commemoration of the first anniversary of Luciano Pavarotti's passing on September 6, 2007. James Levine directed the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and chorus with soprano soloist Barbara Frittoli, mezzo soprano Olga Borodina, tenor Marcello Giordani, and base James Morris. A dinner followed at the home of Mercedes Bass.

Pavarotti e la Bohème is a tribute to the tenor's life and career . The title of the book has not been chosen casually: it was with this opera that Luciano gave his debut in 1961. 

 The work, written in collaboration with Nicoletta Montavani, can be considered a complete and original portrait of Pavarotti's private and public life. Enriched with inhedit images from the Archive of Luciano Pavarotti, the Museo della Scala di Milano and the Teatro Regio di Torino, it also collects testimonies of Maestro Claudio Abbado, soprano Renata Scotto and director Franco Zeffirelli. Among its contents, two essays written by Michele Girardi - professor of musicology at the University of Pavia.

Pavorotti e La Bohème  is not meant to be on sale. It will be just donated to public institutions, opera houses an prestigious and renowned libraries throughout the world. Among the former, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the National Diet Library in Tokyo, the Library of the Musée de l'Opéra and the Centre Pompidou of Beaouburg in Paris, the Musiksammlung der Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale and the library of the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

(M.M.)